Pattern of Wounds

by J. Bertrand

  “What’s that?” she asks.

  I tilt the front toward her. Brad Templeton’s The Kingwood Killing, the mass market edition with the shiny lurid cover featuring the Houston skyline—though the murder of Nicole Fauk didn’t happen downtown—and a kitchen knife dripping with blood, even though the actual weapon was never found. The insert halfway through the book features eight pages of black-and-white photography: Nicole with Donald on their wedding day, Donald posing in front of the Enron building sometime in the mid-1990s, the house in Kingwood they shared. There’s a photo of me, as well, looking grave but eager as I perch on the edge of my newly assigned cubicle in the Homicide Division with the Fauk case file under my arm.

  She takes the book from my hands. “You looked good. You still do.”

  “I looked young then. Now I look my age. I feel it, too.”

  “You’re very handsome and you know it. I would’ve shown you just how much last night, but you stood me up. I had to hitch a ride with some unsavory BigLaw types.” She smiles as she says it, letting me know she was just fine. My sudden exits are part of the job, something she’s learned to take in stride. “Anyway, why the trip down memory lane?”

  “See this one?”

  I flip the page and show her the crime scene shot, taken from the far side of the Fauks’ swimming pool. Unlike the lap pool from last night, the Fauks had an expansive swath of blue complete with a decorative rock-walled alcove doubling as a waterfall. In the background, the redbrick house looms, the outdoor furniture roughly centered. Nicole’s body floated facedown just under the left-hand lip of the pool, in the same vicinity as where Simone Walker was pulled up over the rim.

  Charlotte frowns. “What about it?”

  “I took this one at the scene last night.” I grab my camera and pull up the fresh photo. “Maybe you don’t want to see this, though.”

  She sighs. “Give it here.”

  Charlotte inspects the two pictures minutely, giving no sign that she finds the sight distressing, though of course she must. She has the gift of appearing untouched by shocks, even when they touch her deeply. The things I push to the surface, the things that weather and mark me, she somehow conceals deep down, showing the world a radiant mask, never conceding that it has any power to wound her. I love this about my wife—I envy it—but her control worries me, too. Because sometimes she loses it.

  “They look the same, don’t they?” I ask.

  “Similar, yes.”

  “Not just similar. The scene last night was arranged. The guy who did it, he wanted to make an impression, wanted everything to look a certain way. This is what he was after.” I tap the photo in the book. “He’s seen it. He’s read the book. That picture’s part of his sick fantasy. I’m convinced of it.”

  Sighing, she hands the camera back. “A copycat, you mean?”

  “I’m not saying he copied the crime, just that it somehow inspired him.”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Isn’t it a stretch?”

  Now it’s my turn to sigh. “If you ever get tired of corporate law, you’d make a great homicide lieutenant.”

  “Ah, it’s like that.”

  “Yes it is. Bascombe blew a fuse when I brought it up. Right in front of Sheila Green, who just lapped it up. He’s been testy recently. Butting in where he never used to. I had to keep my mouth zipped the rest of the night, even after he left the scene. But now I look at them and it’s obvious I’m right—”

  “Is it?” She rests a hand on my shoulder. “I think you’re forgetting you had the Fauk case on your brain last night. As soon as we got to the party, you disappeared on me, and then I saw you in the corner with Charlie Bodeen. He was the ADA who prosecuted Fauk, wasn’t he? Before he went into private practice?”

  She’s right and wrong at the same time. I did hole up with Bodeen, grateful to see a familiar face in that sea of reptiles. He’d been happy to see me, too. Over the past few years he might have gained a lot of weight and lost a lot of hair, but he was the same wisecracking cynic who had put a bruise between my shoulder blades after the Fauk jury came back with its verdict, saying this could be the start of a beautiful friendship. Him and me, putting the bad guys behind bars. Only it didn’t turn out like that. Our first case together was also our last.

  “We weren’t reliving the past. In fact, we were actually talking about you.”

  Her eyebrows rise. “What about me?”

  “I forgot all about it until just now. According to him, your firm is in some kind of financial trouble. It’s common knowledge, he said. There are even people blogging about it.” As I speak, she takes a sudden interest in her coffee. “I told him that couldn’t be right or I’d have heard about it.”

  She winces. “You said that?”

  “Not really, no. I thought it, though. But I acted like I knew what he was talking about. It would have been embarrassing otherwise.”

  “Oh, Roland, I’m sorry,” she says, taking my hand. “The only reason I haven’t said anything is that I didn’t want you to worry.”

  “So things must be pretty bad.”

  “Bad enough. I’m glad I left when I did.”

  “But what about your contract work? Is that in danger now? I mean, I guess you don’t need the money, but still—”

  “Nothing’s in danger. And don’t talk like that about money. I love what I do. It’s not about the money.”

  “It’s always about the money,” I say.

  “You don’t believe in my idealism, is that it? Then why don’t we both chuck the jobs and sell the house. That’s what I’ve been trying to get you to do for forever. We could retire. We could live on what we have and we could travel. Enjoy ourselves.”

  “Our twilight years? No, thanks. I’m not ready for the scrap heap yet.”

  “Like you said, we don’t need the money.”

  That’s not what I said. I said she doesn’t. I never think of her money as mine and probably never will.

  “It’s not . . .” My voice trails off.

  She jabs a finger into my arm, laughing triumphantly. “Exactly! It’s not about the money. That’s what you were going to say. You don’t work like you do for the money, and neither do I.”

  “It’s different, though.”

  “Why?”

  “What I do,” I say, “it doesn’t require an idealist. This job won’t let you be one.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, baby. You are one.” She hops off the stool and kisses my neck, slipping past me toward the stairs. “I’ve gotta get ready, too. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you’re breaking all our plans for the weekend.”

  “All our plans?”

  “It’s Sunday,” she calls from the landing. “You promised you’d go with me to church.”

  “Oh,” I say under my breath. “That.”

  The shower starts upstairs and I toss my camera and The Kingwood Killing into my briefcase. According to the microwave clock, it’s already ten after seven. I need to get back to Aguilar. I don’t want him bringing Jason Young in without me.

  I find Aguilar in Meyerland sitting in the Wal-Mart parking lot across from Jason Young’s apartment, a bag from New York Bagels open in his lap. He’s positioned with a view down Dunlap, and as soon as I’m in the passenger seat he points out a red pickup parked on the road.

  “That’s him,” he says. “Rolled up maybe five minutes ago and went inside.”

  “You should have called me.”

  “Why, weren’t you coming? Anyway, I was going to once I finished breakfast. Here, I got you something.”

  He passes the bag across. Before I can decline, the smell of warm, fresh bagels gets the better of me and I reach inside.

  “We’ll get him in a second.”

  “I been thinking,” Aguilar says. “When he went inside, he kinda looked like he was in a hurry. I got the impression he’d be coming back out.”

  “And?”

  “And if he does, maybe we should follow him, see where he’s in su
ch a hurry to get to.”

  “All right,” I say, taking a bite.

  We have to wait another fifteen minutes, but then Aguilar sits up straight, calling attention to a dark-haired, compact man heading for the pickup. He wears a cotton field jacket, jeans, and a pair of tan work boots, casual but neat. Even from down the street I can see something’s wrong with his face.

  “Does that look like bruising to you?” I ask.

  Aguilar grunts. “Maybe she did fight back.”

  “The ME says no to that. Not that Green would commit before the autopsy, but I could tell what she was thinking. The stab wound to the heart was the fatal one, and probably the first to be delivered. He came up from behind, probably cupped a hand over her mouth, and stabbed her in the chest, holding the knife in an ice-pick grip.”

  “Makes sense,” he says. “But somebody laid into the man.”

  “We’ll have to ask him about that.”

  Young pulls the truck door shut and gets going. He drives up Dunlap and puts his right blinker on to turn at Queensloch. Once he reaches Hillcroft, tapping the brakes, Aguilar starts after him. We keep a few car lengths between us, but there’s not much traffic around at a quarter to nine on a Sunday morning. If he’s jumpy, there’s not much we can do to prevent him from spotting us, but that’s always the case with a one-car tail. To do it right, you need a team—or better yet, an eye in the sky. I tell myself not to worry, though, because nine times out of ten the possibility that he’s being followed never occurs to a suspect. That logic aside, I can feel my adrenaline pumping. Next to me, Aguilar grips the wheel tight.

  Young crosses Braeswood and Beechnut, finally taking a right on Bissonnet all the way to the Loop. Aguilar gives me a look, but I say nothing. We trail him to Buffalo Speedway, where he hits a red light. A Honda hatchback stops behind him, and we stack up on its bumper.

  “Is he taking us where I think he’s taking us?”

  Aguilar lets out a breath but doesn’t answer.

  The light changes and we crawl forward.

  “He’ll turn on Belmont,” I say.

  But he doesn’t.

  “He’ll turn on Wakeforest.”

  But again, he doesn’t. We’re skirting West U., expecting any minute for Young to take the right turn that will lead directly and inevitably to our crime scene. At Kirby, though, he puts the left blinker on, heading away from the house, crossing under Highway 59.

  “That’s a roundabout way of getting here,” I say. “Do you think he was heading to the scene and changed his mind? Maybe he spotted us?”

  Aguilar shrugs. “If my wife left me and that’s where she was staying, maybe I’d take detours, too.”

  “Maybe, but he didn’t actually turn. It’s like he was heading that way out of habit, then realized he can’t do that anymore. Not after what he did to her last night.”

  He takes Kirby to Westheimer, then cuts across to Shepherd and takes another left, leading us across Allen Parkway and Interstate 10 and farther north. In sight of the North Loop, he pulls into a strip center parking lot and stops. Aguilar keeps going, but I crane my neck to keep an eye on him. We circle round, edging into the far side of the lot.

  “He’s getting out,” I say.

  Young’s door pops open and he slides to the ground. He doubles over, one hand still hanging on to the door handle. After a couple of dry heaves, he vomits onto the pavement.

  “I’m not believing this.” Aguilar laughs. “This is our guy.”

  Wiping his mouth, Young gets back in the truck and keeps going. We follow him under 610. After a series of turns, he pulls into a full parking lot, weaving through a stream of coated pedestrians hunched over by the brisk wind. The building on the far side of the lot has a round central window divided into quarters by a masonry cross.

  “Looks like I’m going to church after all,” I say.

  Young parks his truck near the back of the lot and gets out, pausing at the tailgate to let a couple of arriving cars pass. We’re the last in line.

  “Stop the car,” I tell Aguilar. “I’m not letting him go in.”

  He jerks to a halt right in front of Young, throws the car in park, and has his badge out before I can even make it around to the driver’s side. He’s already into his spiel before I walk up, telling a startled Young that we’re the police and we need his cooperation on an important matter. He doesn’t mention the specifics, though, not wanting to give anything away.

  “I don’t understand,” Young says. His lip sports a fresh cut and there’s a purple crosshatched scrape along the jawline. He clutches a scuffed Bible in one hand. I notice cuts and bruising on his knuckles, too. “Did I run a light or something?”

  “We need your assistance, sir.” Aguilar puts a friendly but firm hand on his shoulder. “We’re making inquiries and I think you can help us. You’re willing to do that, aren’t you, sir? To help the police?”

  Young nods slowly. “Of course.”

  “Are you all right, sir?” I ask. “You look like you’ve been in a fight.”

  “You should see the other guy.” He gives me a queasy smile that only gets queasier when I don’t return it. “No, I’m okay. It’s nothing.”

  It doesn’t look like nothing. Young’s eyes are red-rimmed and watery, and there’s a feverish pallor to his skin. Symptoms of flu, perhaps, though my money’s on stress. The stress of getting caught so soon.

  “Is there anything you need from your vehicle?”

  He glances at the truck, then me, not comprehending.

  “We’re gonna need you to accompany us,” Aguilar says.

  “To go with you? I can’t leave my truck. Maybe I could follow you.”

  I jab my thumb at the church. “I’m sure nobody will bother it here. Now, is there anything you need to get?”

  He moves like he’s in a trance, pulling open the driver’s door, looking inside like he’s never seen the truck’s interior before. I glance over his shoulder. Simone Walker’s clothes were missing from the scene, and so were her laptop and cell phone. According to Dr. Hill, she often took them out with her when she smoked, sitting at the outside table to answer email and update her Facebook page. No sign of any of that in the truck cabin, though.

  Aguilar pops open the passenger door. “Anything I can help you with?”

  “No,” Young says. “No, thanks.”

  He takes nothing from the truck, only deposits the Bible on the dash. When he locks up, he has to use the key. Either there’s no automatic opener or it doesn’t work.

  “Okay,” he says.

  I open the back door for him. He starts to get in, then pauses, conscious of the churchgoers watching on the periphery. His pale cheeks redden and he hurries into the car, pulling the door shut himself. Aguilar and I exchange a look over the roof. We’re taking a chance not putting him under arrest or even patting him down. But it’s a calculated risk. He knows what he did, but he doesn’t know whether we know. He doesn’t know how much we know. As long as he believes there’s a shot at getting out of this, he’s still liable to talk. Technically he’s just a witness, a person of interest helping with our investigation. If we read him his rights and treat him like a suspect, he’s not going to give us a thing.

  We get inside and close the doors.

  “You all right back there?” I ask.

  “I’m fine,” he says, nodding for emphasis.

  I trade another look with Aguilar. Young hasn’t asked why we want to talk to him. Either he’s very trusting or he already knows.

  The man who drowned his own father in the bathtub last night is sitting in Interview Room 1 with Jerry Lorenz, one of the greenhorns on our shift. So I install Young in Interview 2 with promises of coffee and breakfast muffins on my return. Down the hallway I find Lt. Bascombe in front of the monitors. He sends Aguilar off to his cubicle for a much-needed nap and beckons me into the room.

  “And shut the door behind you.”

  He’s set on interfering, I can tell.


  On one screen, Young has his elbows on the table, hands folded, gazing blandly at the four corners of the room. On the other, Lorenz paces back and forth while his suspect, a fragile-looking man in a stained guayabera, cradles his face in his hands.

  “That looks like it’s going well,” I say.

  “This is what I like, March. Fresh homicides on a Sunday morning. Overtime for everybody, suspects for everybody, closures for everybody. We even have a name for the shooter on Antoine. When we pick him up, we’ll be three for three—assuming the glove fits for Mr. Jason Young.”

  “It fits,” I say. “We tailed him before picking him up, and he just about led us back to the scene. Then he veers off and starts heading north, where he pulls into a parking lot and dumps his breakfast onto the pavement.”

  “And you got him going into a church? That sounds like a guilty conscience to me.”

  I nod. “It’ll sound that way to the jury, too. He didn’t even ask why we brought him in. He just came.”

  “ ’Cause the boy knows he done wrong,” Bascombe says, breaking into a smile. “Now, are you ready to have a go at him?”

  “I think so. We got a look in his truck and didn’t see anything, but I’d like to get a warrant to search his apartment.”

  “I thought he didn’t get home until this morning, and Aguilar saw him go inside. There’s nothing in there.”

  “He could have come and gone anytime yesterday. I still don’t have a firm time of death.”

  “Go look on your desk,” he says. “The autopsy’s this afternoon, but Dr. Green gave me some preliminary info over the phone.”

  “She did?”

  “When you need something special from the ME, you just call your brother-in-law. When I need something special, I use my charm.”

  “Charm. I’ll have to try that.”

  “There’s something else on your desk, too,” Bascombe says. “You left a message with your victim’s mother? Well, she called back. I spared you the hassle of doing the notification, but she’s coming down here to give a statement. She brought your suspect’s name up and said she’s positive he’s the one.”