by Lisa Black
‘I think the cops are here. Siren’s coming.’
The passenger door pocket carried a dead cockroach and the stubby end of a different kind of roach – naughty, Laurel – and a screwdriver. That might have been handy if she’d wanted to counter James’ knife, but of course she’d have had to get to it first.
A police siren that became more ear-splitting the closer it came announced that the cavalry had arrived. They burst around the side of the building, gravel flying, and the noise became truly uncomfortable. She waited, trying to cross her arms, but the cuffs made that impossible. No reason to be peeved at them, of course, but at the moment she felt peeved at the entire world.
Don flew out of the unmarked car as soon as it stopped rolling, shouted her name once and embraced her in an awkward – given the cuffs – hug; under usual circumstances this would have thrilled her, but right now she was too well aware of her unwashed, uncombed, bruised, barely and badly clothed body that had nothing save a dab of Japanese Cherry going for it.
‘I can’t believe you’re alive!’ was among the things he exclaimed.
‘There were moments I had my doubts,’ she said.
Shephard stood a few feet away, watching them with an unreadable expression on his face. ‘Want those off?’
She held out the cuffs. ‘No, I’d actually gotten rather attached to them. No pun intended.’
‘That was a pun?’ He used his key. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Let me get back to you on that.’
He ducked his head down as he unlocked the second cuff, taking a closer look at her face. But he didn’t ask again.
‘Geeze, Theresa, your hands,’ Don said. The wrists were chafed and reddened, a layer or two of skin scraped off here and there, but they weren’t bleeding. They would turn a few different colors in the coming week.
‘What can you tell me?’ Shephard asked.
‘He got a phone call. We stopped. He got out and someone shot him. And, almost, me.’ She pointed to the hole in the car fender. ‘I used the jack to get out. Expect a victim’s compensation claim from a Miss Laurel Hightower.’
He nodded, solemnly. ‘Where have you been all day?’
‘First he had me drive to the beach—’
‘The beach?’
‘All part of a stroll down memory lane. Look, I’m starving and thirsty and really need a bathroom. Can we do this somewhere else?’ Her voice wavered on the last few words, but she cut herself some slack. It really had been a bad day.
‘Absolutely. Yin and Yang and Don here can handle the crime scene. Doesn’t look like we’ll get much from it, anyway.’ Shephard put a hand on each of her shoulders and guided her toward his car as if she might collapse at any moment, and in truth that seemed more likely than it had four minutes before.
He shot a look at Don as they left, and it appeared, inexplicably, triumphant.
TWENTY-SEVEN
An hour later – after she had scrounged a few clean clothes from her pathologist friend Christina, and then used up every paper towel in the ladies’ room trying to take the wettest sponge bath possible using nothing but a small porcelain sink – she felt nearly human. Especially after two cups of coffee and a western omelet, which Shephard had procured from the medical school cafeteria next door and presented with such pride that she hadn’t had the heart to tell him she felt that green peppers and eggs were two foods which should never intersect. Now she sat in a task chair blowing on her third cup of coffee while Neenah applied first aid to her raw wrists and the other small lacerations she’d accumulated during the morning. She didn’t need to call anyone; no one had had the courage to inform either Rachael or her mother of her plight, so both had gone through the day blissfully unaware of Theresa’s brush with violence. And she had already decided that they would continue to do so, for the rest of their lives.
Shephard had asked her to go through the day’s events again as both he and Yin – Theresa had completely blanked out on his real name – of the detective team took notes. They had that edgy air of indecision that came after a case broke. Urgency had ended, the killer put down and the prior murders more or less confessed to. Theresa had been recovered unharmed – largely unharmed, though she knew she would have trouble drifting off to sleep in the coming months without seeing a shadow creeping into her room or dreaming of a bumpy ride in an enclosed space. All should be well, with only a mountain of paperwork to tackle before memories faded.
Except for the slight problem of the extra dead body. James had killed George, Darryl, and Dr Reese, no question. But who had shot James?
‘And who strangled Diana?’ Theresa asked aloud.
‘You honestly think he told you the truth?’ Shephard asked.
‘Do I think he’s capable of killing his wife in a hazy, drug-fueled rage and then convincing himself he didn’t? Yes, I do. But if that’s true, then who killed him?’
‘Allman had a criminal history even apart from the murder, and he spent a long time in jail,’ Yin pointed out. ‘He might have had a target on his back for completely separate reasons. He meets up with an old pal to borrow some money or a weapon, and the old pal grabs the opportunity to settle a score.’
‘If that’s so we might never catch up to them,’ Shephard said.
‘But we can’t assume the obvious answer is the right one. That may be the mistake we made with Diana,’ Theresa said, trying to sound firm while wincing as Neenah tied the gauze around her left wrist.
‘Charitable use of “we”,’ Shephard said, obviously trying not to bristle.
‘I thought so.’
Yin’s phone rang. He listened, snapped it shut and stood up. ‘Casey Allman is downstairs.’
‘Who’s Casey Allman?’ Theresa asked.
‘The cousin who’s a cop,’ Shephard explained, rising as well.
‘Good. I’d really like to meet him.’ She scrambled after both of them.
‘You’re still bleeding!’ Neenah called, pointing to a scrape on her arm that would not stop oozing.
Theresa snatched a Kimwipe out of the dispenser box as she went out the door. They were designed to be used on a microscope lens, but worked on skin just as well.
Casey Allman looked like a cop. Tall and pale with short sandy hair, he exuded calm, authority, and many hours in the gym. His uniform fit with barely a wrinkle. He stood straight with only the slightest hunch to his shoulders to hint at some inner pain. He seemed neither cynical nor defensive, nor sad. Theresa let him and the cops into the tiny library. The conference room had been taken over by a grief counseling session ‘for staff members who would like to attend due to the office’s recent losses’.
Theresa shut the door behind them, neatly including herself in the meeting.
Yin noticed immediately. ‘You don’t have to stay for this, Theresa.’
‘Oh, I do. I was with your cousin when he died,’ she added to Casey, putting extra warmth into her voice. Perhaps he would believe she remained to support him instead of question him. Perhaps Yin would, too.
Shephard knew better, from the sharp look he gave her.
‘What happened?’ Casey Allman asked.
She let Yin summarize as she doodled with the handy pencils and supply of scrap paper kept in the library.
‘I’m sorry that happened to you,’ Casey told her when the detective had finished.
‘I’m not too much the worse for wear. You don’t have to apologize for your cousin’s actions.’
‘Why not? I’ve been doing it most of my life. James was pretty much trouble from the day he was born.’ Casey Allman crossed his arms and glanced out the window. ‘We grew up together, yes, but that bond has a shelf life. Truth is, I’m only here now because my mother would give me grief if I didn’t show up to, I don’t know, represent the family or something.’
‘Tell me about him,’ she said. The two cops just listened.
‘Let’s see – he stole my neighbor’s dog when we were ten. Of course, the thing ran home as s
oon as it could, and I had to talk him out of a repeat. He watched an old movie once and decided we should hop a boxcar and go to California. He had this thoroughly planned out, he said. Talked me into it. It turned out his careful planning meant he put a juice box and a package of gummy worms in his pocket, and we wound up in Pittsburgh. I mean, that stuff sounds cute now and we would laugh about it, but as the years passed he did stuff that wasn’t so cute any more. He sold pot at our junior high. He robbed a convenience store at gunpoint before he was old enough to drive – got away with it, but it still scared him bad enough that he stayed pretty cool for years after that. Then – well, I’m sure you’ve seen his record. He dragged half of my family members into every one of his dramas. I hate to say it, but the past ten years were just a little bit more peaceful with him in jail.’
Theresa nodded.
‘Did you know he was out?’ Yin asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Did you know he was working at the ME’s under an assumed name?’
‘What? No! He said he worked at a grocery store.’
Yin explained about the Justin Warner alias.
‘You mean he’d been planning this?’
‘Yes. That surprises you?’
‘James hasn’t planned a single thing since the gummy worms, so yes, that surprises me.’
‘Do you remember Diana?’ Theresa asked.
Casey Allman sat back in his chair, tightening his arms and looking at the slender window again as if checking his options for egress. ‘Diana. Di-ana.’
‘His wife—’
‘We all knew Diana, believe me.’ He sighed, returned his gaze to Theresa. ‘Hot as … well, hot. Never understood what the hell she was doing with James, and it seemed clear, after the first couple of months, that neither could she. She was nice to James’ mother while she was alive, I’ll say that for Diana. The rest of us she tolerated. I don’t think we fit into the life to which she some day hoped to become accustomed.’
‘Why not?’ Theresa asked. Across from her, Shephard fidgeted with what was probably impatience. She ignored him.
Casey sighed again, but it seemed more dismissive than weary. ‘She complained that James had champagne tastes on a beer budget, and he did, but so did she. She bitched that he got a tattoo instead of getting the furnace fixed, but then she bought a purse instead of a new tire when his were bald. Diana planned to tour Italy – oh, and France – and spent a lot of time talking about the Grand Canal and the Palazzo Farnese and other places that I don’t think she was even pronouncing correctly.’
‘Did she or James mention being pregnant?’
His eyes bulged momentarily. ‘No! Was she? No one ever told us that.’
‘Truthfully, we’re not sure at this time.’
‘Shit.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘Shit.’
‘She didn’t say anything about it? No hints, or indications? What about your wife or the other women in the family? Might she have confided in one of them?’
‘Not a chance. Diana wasn’t a coffee klatch kind of girl, said all the chatting about babies and playdates and soccer practice bored her silly. As I said, she had a much different lifestyle in mind. The last time I saw her she talked about skiing – skiing. I mean, seriously?’
‘A lot of people ski,’ Theresa pointed out. Especially in Cleveland.
‘The most physically intensive activity Diana participated in was filing her nails,’ Casey snapped. ‘She batted her eyes at everything that walked by with a d— anything male, especially if it came with a paycheck. But if James so much as talked to another girl, then he was taking her for granted.’
‘So you weren’t a big fan of Diana’s?’
‘No.’ He looked away again, down, fiddled with the ancient metal fittings around the table leg. ‘Not at all.’
Except, perhaps, in the way one shouldn’t feel about their cousin’s wife.
‘So it didn’t surprise you when he killed her?’ Theresa asked.
‘No – honestly, it didn’t.’ He fell silent.
‘I understand you were the first responder.’
‘Yeah. I heard the address over the radio when I was only two streets away, so I took it. I was a FTO then—’ Theresa knew this meant Field Training Officer – ‘and I had a rookie with me. Dispatch had just said dead, they didn’t say who, so my first thought was that James had overdosed.’ He sighed, and this time he did seem sad, rubbing his face with a calloused hand. His nails had been bitten to the quick, black ink marked up the inside of his middle finger, and the springy hairs from some kind of pet fur cropped up here and there along one sleeve. He didn’t relish, understandably, going over the murder again. Theresa’s attention never wavered from his face, trying to crawl back through time and see everything through his eyes.
‘And that was late afternoon?’ Odd, for her to be questioning someone, but Yin and Shephard let her go. As long as the witness is talking, don’t mess with the process.
‘Yeah. It was a nice day, clear. We rolled up. The back door was open, and we made entry … found her on the floor. Cleared the house, called it in.’
‘What was she wearing?’
‘Wearing? Um – a blue shirt, those Viva Las Vegas white hot pants. No shoes. Strangled with the jump rope. I didn’t know it was the jump rope then, I didn’t look at it that closely.’
‘Do you remember her jewelry?’
His eyebrows went up a notch. ‘He told you about the ring, huh?’
‘Yep.’
‘I should never have told him that. He’s obsessed with that damn ring.’
‘What did you see, at the scene?’
He shot her the tiniest lift of his lips, as if appreciating the nicely non-leading question. ‘She had on a gold band and a silver sapphire and diamond ring. Earrings. I couldn’t really see if there might have been a necklace in that mess. I didn’t want to get that close, and I did not move the body. You can ask the rookie, he’s still with the department.’
‘Okay,’ Theresa smiled. ‘What did the sapphire ring look like?’
He described stones and clusters until she held up her doodle. ‘Did it look like this?’
‘Yeah. That’s it.’
‘Okay. So you bagged the hands.’
Yin finally began to fidget as well, but Shephard seemed to have resigned himself. She figured that he figured that Theresa had spent a morning listening to James’ self-justifications of the crime, so she had a list of statements to confirm.
‘Yep. Paper bags, evidence tape. By the manual.’
‘And EMS responded out?’
‘They came and pronounced. Didn’t move her or anything.’
‘Detectives came out.’
‘And the lieutenant. But I stayed until they loaded her up.’
‘And that was George Bain – the body-snatcher that day?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know his name. I’d seen him before, and afterwards, but—’
‘And you were in and out of the house, probably?’
‘No, I stayed with her body from the time I got there until the bodysnatchers left. Figured it was the least I could do, for James.’
‘Not for Diana?’ she couldn’t resist asking.
He frowned. ‘I guess for her, too, yeah.’
‘James spent the morning telling me he didn’t kill Diana.’
‘Don’t they all?’ Casey said with a shrug. ‘Say that, I mean?’
‘Why did you say you should never have told James about the ring?’
He puffed out a disgusted sigh. ‘I would visit him in the can once in a while. Felt like I should, no one else would other than his mom before she died. Maybe a year or two after he’d gone in, he started asking for details of that day, everything I’d done, seen. Like you just did. Okay, fine. But then first he decides that he didn’t do it at all, and then after another year or so he decides that this ring could prove his innocence. I kept trying to tell him, even if Diana had a ring on that disappeared somewhere down the line, it doesn
’t change the fact that you did pawn a ring you stole from her just before she got strangled on your kitchen floor. That ring is not a friggin’ Get Out of Jail Free card, no matter what happened to it.’
Theresa nodded.
He continued, his voice growing more strident. ‘But he insisted. And insisted. I think he spent every night dreaming of that stupid ring for the last half of his sentence. It became some magic talisman that would fix his life and make him king.’
‘Did you know what he planned to do once he got out?’
He straightened in alarm. ‘No! Of course not.’
‘I don’t mean about the murders. But did he have any plans for finding this ring?’
He appeared to think. ‘No … he didn’t say. The last year of his sentence, he dialed it down. Stopped mentioning the ring, stopped talking about the murder … I was only there a couple times so I didn’t think about it, figured it had run its course. Obsession is a way of life inside. It gives them something to think about, and when one is used up they go on to another. If I thought about it at all, that’s what I thought. James talked only about getting out, getting a job, getting his life in order, blah blah blah, the same well-meaning bullshit they practice for the parole board, and James had been practicing since he could speak … I mean, I see that now. I probably should have paid more attention.’
‘You can’t be responsible for your cousin’s—’
‘Exactly,’ he said, but without a convincing amount of confidence. ‘I’ve been dealing with his fallout since we were kids, but that’s over. He was family, yes, so I visited and hugged him when he got out and said supportive things, but as far as responsible – that ended the day he killed Diana.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
‘What do you think?’ Shephard asked her after Yin had taken Casey Allman to identify his cousin’s body.
‘I think Cousin Casey the Cop liked Diana a lot more than he’s willing to acknowledge, and not in a brotherly way.’ They had remained in the library; it gave them a quiet place to talk, with wide and worn wooden chairs. Theresa pulled her knees to her chin, feeling as if she had completed a marathon – after the adrenalin from the continued stress of the morning finally ebbed away, it left a sort of deep chill in its wake.