He pulled her pants down. The underwear was soaked in bright blood and Roy peeled it off with the sunny industry of a nurse redressing a wound.
“You said you thought you were getting close to your moment . . . sorry to rob you of that. Wonder who the bugger was. Oh well. Hey, you know what Violet is? Violet’s a rude little cunt. There you are, flying around in planes, business class no doubt, occasional upgrade to first, enjoying your life, drinking fine kosher wine, making a shitload of money—doin’ all kinds of quality fucking (you know you’re the hands-down hottie of the Meeting, right? Though Maya’s a close second)—there you are at the top of your game and wham!—a-hole Violet moves in so she can play her dumb shitty game of afterlife retribution. Tsk, tsk. That’s an interesting theory about the thrombosis, and you might just be right. I think I had a heart attack, which is more age-appropriate for a fogey like me. I remember driving along, don’t recall where to, and I suddenly had these killer chest pains, the whole radiating, achy-arm, elephant-on-your-chest classic. Probably the Big One—what the cardiologists call ‘the Widowmaker.’ I did a little googling myself. I pull over and pass out and the next thing I know I’m awake and just fine—relatively speaking! Off I go, putt-puttin’ down the road. And right then, I started to feel him: the incredible shrinking loser and party-crasher, Mister Dabba Doo. What a pain in the ass he is. No wonder some pedophile whacked him! Dabba Doo: now there’s a bigger cunt than Violet. And wham! A week or so later, my butt’s sitting in a Meeting. Wham, bam, thank you, Annie!”
He took off his clothes. Roy wanted to hear music but her audio setup was too hard to figure out.
“Hey, but Annie’s a helluva gal, don’t you think? She hasn’t looked too spiffy in the last few weeks, have you noticed? Maybe she’s got a thrombosis goin’ on herself.”
He stayed with Sarabeth and Violet until past midnight, long after both departed.
book three
Local and Express
For the children, when your time is done, it is VERY important to THANK YOUR LANDLORD—they’ve been such CARING roommates!!! Remember, without THEM, you would never have been able to have your moment of balance. For the landlords, when YOUR time is done, THANK your BODY!!! (For the wonderful times it provided.) NEVER FORGET that it gave you so much more time than your child-tenants had! And THANK the FRIENDS and FAMILY that you LOVED . . . and thank this beautiful BLUE EARTH.
—from “The End” (the Guidebook)
VISITATIONS
Once upon a hill, we sat beneath a willow tree
Counting all the stars, and waiting for the dawn . . .
—Charles Strouse and Lee Adams
1.
Willow’s day (and night) was full.
He planned to leave work after lunch and drop in on Adelaide before driving down to New Baltimore to keep his appointment with Roy Eakins. Then, in the evening, he would pick up Annie and attend his first Meeting, at the Cross of Glory Lutheran Church in Detroit. (After Honeychile had trespassed, the circumspect Annie moved it from the Divine Child Parish.) Willow had mixed emotions about that.
But mostly, he was scared shitless.
A nagging sense of folie à deux made him shudder—that he was entering into an irreversible pact with a deranged woman. He pictured himself back in AA (he hadn’t been to a meeting since moving to Macomb) and imagined his share before the packed room: “I started drinking again because I got stressed over a new job. I couldn’t handle being the scout leader of a troop of dead kids whose mission was to hunt down and kill their own murderers.” The macabre fantasy made him laugh, and he was glad he still could. He sensed that his laughing days were coming to an end.
He knew that Owen wouldn’t be home when he stopped over, which was best. He wanted to talk to Adelaide before his appointment with Roy, though the detective wasn’t even sure what it was that he wanted from her. He was flying by the seat of his pants—or maybe Roy Eakins’s pants—and none of it seemed particularly promising. What else was an over-the-hill, in-over-his-head cold case fuck-up to do? At least Roy was affable when they talked on the phone. It sounded counterintuitive but if the man had been closemouthed or even nasty, Willow may not have had the energy to further pursue. But Roy had always been affable. Like Ronnie Rummer, he actually sounded excited that Willow had called.
From Adelaide’s, he would pick Annie up at the SRO in Detroit. She was getting weaker and the bus ride to the Meeting had become too challenging. She told him to come at 7:00 P.M. He got nauseous just thinking about it.
Since he’d ripped them new assholes, the Cold Case Kids had gotten down to brass tacks. Lydia even approached him with a few rape kits, breaking her monomaniacal focus on the Rummers. When the detective told them about his visit with Elaine and Ronnie Rummer, they listened attentively, not in that weird way they tended to whenever Willow began talking about Troy and Maya’s parents. In general, they played their emotions close to the vest. Only once did Lydia betray an inner turmoil—when he shared that Elaine tried to kill herself on multiple occasions, the last effort ending in a disfiguring shotgun wound to the face. Willow thought that might have triggered something about Lydia’s own mother, but didn’t want to pry.
Before he left to see Adelaide, they met in the conference room so he could hear a plan of action. He could see they needed a kick in the pants. (The detective was starting to worry that he hadn’t properly been doing his job.) It haunted him that he had always failed as a mentor, from his daughter on down—which begged the surreal yet pressing question: How the fuck am I going to be of any use to Annie?
He scrutinized the corkboard as the rookies spoke of the leads they had chased, admitting with some chagrin that there wasn’t anything that looked intuitively promising.
“Then stop looking for intuitive,” Willow said sagely. “Intuitive can be overrated. Look for the real—connections that are real. Let ‘intuitive’ take care of itself.”
They nodded gravely, like freshmen in Wizard School.
“Here’s something obvious,” said Willow. “Maybe too obvious but I’d have been on it six ways from Sunday.” He touched the fingertips of both hands, as if encircling a crystal ball. “The serial killer in Jacobs Prairie . . . that’s not too far from here, right? Are there any dots to connect?”
Lydia brightened—finally, they could please their teacher.
“We looked into it,” said Daniel drily.
“And?” said Willow.
“Timeline doesn’t work.”
“He was in jail that summer,” said Lydia. “Failure to pay child support.”
“You could have told me about that.”
“Sorry, sir,” said Lydia.
“Cold case folks from all around the country have gotten their knickers wet over that little shootout,” added Willow.
He stared at the pinned bag with the birthday card inside. Adorned with a sequined unicorn, it had been found in Maya’s bicycle basket, the one Elaine helped decorate with red plastic roses. The police surmised it had been picked up from the ground where it fell, then fastidiously replaced. It bore two prints: a tire track from the bike itself, and that of a human hand. In a show of solidarity and love, the community offered up their palms—hundreds of them. Willow had already returned to New York when he heard about the voluntary effort, and while it touched him (a three-page feature, “Palm Sunday,” ran in People), the cynical cop knew better. He thought it was a colossal waste of money and manpower. He tended to agree with Ronnie Rummer. Whoever grabbed those kids was likely transient, and long gone by the time Saggerty Falls staged its compassionate act of theater.
“I keep seeing that card. What’s it still doing here?” he said gruffly. The deputies were perplexed. “Send it to the lab. See if they can get some DNA off the print.”
It had never been swabbed. In 2000, DNA was only something in the air.
“Yes, sir,” said Lydia.
“Seems unlikely, though, doesn’t it, sir?” said Daniel.
“I’d like a dollar for every time ‘unlikely’ turned out to be a grand slam.”
“Yes, sir.”
Since having their backsides spanked, they’d been sir-ing him to death like child actors out of Oliver! It amused more than it annoyed. He returned his gaze to the Ouija board of clues.
“Have either of you come across the name Roy Eakins? Or Grundy Eakins?”
“The teacher and his son?” said Lydia. “Sure. I read his interview—the father’s.”
“The boy was developmentally disabled,” said Daniel.
“That’s right,” said Willow.
“He was ruled out,” said Lydia. “He was at the barbecue all day.”
“They both were—they never left. Why do you ask, sir?”
“I’m interviewing Roy this afternoon.”
“Really,” said Daniel.
“Like us to come along?” said Lydia.
“No, I think you can sit this one out. I’m not even sure why I’m going. Definitely no need to show up with the whole cavalry.”
“He was cleared,” said Daniel. “He submitted a palm print. They both did—to my knowledge.”
“What do you hope to learn?” said Lydia.
“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “It’s just one of those intuitive things.”
“‘Intuitive’ can be overrated,” she said impishly.
* * *
• • •
Though he had no reason to, Willow parked around the corner from the Caplans’ driveway, so his car wouldn’t be visible—old stalk-and-skulk habits die hard.
But there was something else to his skullduggery; when it came to Adelaide, being surreptitious gave him an erotic charge. He’d been fantasizing about her again. He couldn’t have been happier about his sex life with Dixie Rose, but the idea of seducing his ex-wife (with the twofer of cuckolding Owen) set his heart aflutter. Some of it was sore loser’s payback—it would cut the sheriff to the quick—but mostly, it was the pure, verboten kick, the Blueberry Thrill of it all. Addie was great in bed, one of the few women he’d met who could come on a dime. So many of his lovers after the marriage (and during) seemed to have trouble in that department. It was practically an epidemic. After a while, a man couldn’t help thinking he was the problem.
As he walked the half block to Adelaide’s, his cell phone rang. It was Owen. Jesus, the man’s telepathic. He informed Willow that he was having his first interview with Honeychile in the morning. Then he dropped something that righteously pissed Willow off. The sheriff said he’d learned that Lydia and Daniel were in uniform when they stopped by lockdown “to have tea and crackers with my suspect. Do you make them wear deputy uniforms to work, Dubya?” Of course he didn’t and Owen knew it. Willow could tell that his boss was more irritated than anything else—there were too many things on his plate just now—but the Cold Case rookies’ costume party had been enough to warrant a mention. “You might look into that,” he reprimanded. “You bet I will,” said Willow.
He hung there on the sidewalk a moment, wrestling with the impulse to call the Devonshires, which probably wasn’t a good idea. Then he said fuck it and dialed them anyway.
Harold picked up.
Willow hadn’t thought it through—not his specialty—and had to do some tap dancing. He introduced himself as a detective, omitting that he worked Cold Case. He apologized for interrupting Harold’s day.
“What can I do for you?”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t get you folks in to see your daughter that afternoon.”
“Well, someone finally made that happen,” said Harold. “But I appreciate it.”
“We had a couple of deputies who were upset that the hospital was being—well, going a little too ‘by the book.’ You may even have run into them while you were there.”
“Oh yes. They came to see us while we were waiting. They were very kind.”
“Do you work with veterans, Mr. Devonshire?”
“Excuse me?”
“Have you ever done any work with PTSD veteran groups?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Sorry for asking,” said Willow, milking his acting chops. “One of the deputies is a vet and he said that you reminded him of a fellow in his group.”
“Why were you calling again?”
The query sounded borderline tetchy; the last thing Willow needed was for Mr. Devonshire to call in some kind of complaint, as far-fetched as that might seem.
“I really just wanted to see how y’all were doing and wish you my best. Have a good evening and sorry to have bothered.”
“No bother at all.”
* * *
• • •
Hey there, mystery man,” said Adelaide, inviting him in.
God, she was gorgeous. For the first time, he noticed a melancholy to the observation, though not over what he’d lost. No, the sadness came because Dixie had stealthily put a yurt up on the precious, long-barren land where he and his ex once lived. Willow hadn’t built on the property for years and Addie had the feeling he never would. She took comfort as well in knowing he’d converted the acreage into a memorial park—and Willow drew comfort in knowing that she knew.
It was complicated.
“Wassup, Dubya?”
“Not a helluva lot. Just doing the Cold Case deal.”
“Owen said that you went to see the Rummers.”
“Yup. That’ll put a dent in your mood.”
“Poor things,” she said. “God.”
“Speak of the devil—I think Ronnie found Christ.”
“Well, I guess if you can’t find your kids, you have to find somebody.” She winced. “Forgive me, that was awful.”
“You’re dark, Addie. It’s what I miss about you.”
“You don’t miss me, Dub. You might think you do but you don’t. Which is probably a good thing.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You might miss the ‘me’ you had before things went south . . . but things went south a long-ass time before we busted up.” She grew thoughtful. “I’m sorry for all the hurt, Willow. I’m sorry for my share.”
“We’re still standing.”
“That’s right. We didn’t take each other down—not that we didn’t try.” Oh! That gorgeous, crooked mouth when it smiled! “And we have a beautiful daughter to show for our troubles.”
“Yes we do. And a beautiful grandson.”
“I’ll drink to that,” she said. “Note I said I’ll drink, not you.”
It was so easy with her, but he needed to focus.
“I’ve really been traveling down memory lane with this Rummer case. Hey, remember Roy Eakins?”
“Roy? ’Course I do.”
“Whatever happened to him?” he said.
“No idea,” she said. “He moved away—not for a while, though. It must have been about a year after the kids disappeared. I heard he was teaching at some fancy school somewhere . . .”
“They were at the barbecue, weren’t they? I mean, Roy and his kid.”
“Well, I came late, remember? I declined the invitation—I wasn’t too thrilled when I learned you were riding back into town from New York on that surprise birthday puppy. Turned out to be a pretty good gift though, huh. Anyway, I only went over when I heard the kids were missing. When Pace and I got there, it was already after dark.”
Of course Adelaide hadn’t come till later; he’d blocked that out completely. He thought he was being so crafty with his little fishing expedition, but suddenly he felt old, senile, inept.
“It’s funny, though,” she said. “On the way to the Rummers’, we passed them on the road—Roy and Grundy. I’m just now remembering . . . You know that dirt road, how slow you had to go? There were cop cars com
ing and going, just—craziness. Folks with flashlights running in the fields . . . Do you remember the chaos, Dubya? Truly, truly horrible. And a car came toward us with two people fighting inside, like literally punching each other in the front seat! And I kind of pulled over—I’m just remembering this now—I thought it might be a couple of drunk kids but it was Roy. He slowed down—I think he probably must have seen it was me and felt he needed to explain. Gave us that big smile of his, which was weird considering the circumstances. Said something about Grundy having a nosebleed and how he had to get him home. You remember that boy. He was way off. Roy should have put him in one of those places they seem to have everywhere now, but I guess back then the choices were limited. I mean, he either had to keep him at the house or throw him in some county snake pit—anyway, he was trying to be a good dad, which I think he was. Grundy was always acting out, hittin’ his head against walls, remember? He was a ‘helmet’ kid. And I think that’s probably why—well, I know that’s why it didn’t work out in the romance department. It was too much work. Not so sexy when it came to the dating game. Poor, poor Roy. He had to concoct a whole system just to deal with that kid, it was seriously a full-time job. Quiet time for bad behavior, rewards for good . . . Grundy just sat in the car staring out the windshield with his bloody nose. It was a good thing he got him out of there, because his behavior was unpredictable. I don’t think he was ever embarrassed—that’s what I loved about Roy—but he knew that Elaine and Ronnie had enough to handle. That’s the understatement of the century.”
It was getting late and Willow needed to leave if he wanted to get to Roy’s on time.
“Is that why you came to see me, Willow? To noodle around about Roy?”
“Maybe a little bit. Maybe I got a little nostalgic, in general.”
“I guess we’re a cold case that can never be solved.”
A Guide for Murdered Children Page 25