Pattern of Wounds

by J. Bertrand

  “Really? So maybe I need to hold off on talking to him and see what she can give me first. The more information I have, the better.”

  “It’s your call.” He glances back at the monitor and his smile fades. “Listen, March. That penguin suit last night, what was that all about?”

  “Charlotte’s firm hosted a Christmas thing and she promised conjugal relations in exchange for my attendance. So thanks for ruining that.”

  “Don’t blame me,” he says, pointing at the monitor. “Take it out on him. But the question I wanted to ask is, did you see the captain at this party?”

  “Hedges? No, why?”

  He shakes his head. “No reason.”

  “Come on, Lieutenant. You asked for a reason.”

  “Let it drop.”

  “He never showed last night at the scene,” I say. “That was a little odd.”

  “We had our hands full last night. Don’t make a big thing out of it. I was just wondering if you two ran in the same circles is all.”

  But that’s not all. I can tell. He dismisses me and I go straight to the captain’s office, which is dark and locked tight. Of course it is. If he’s not going to show on a Saturday night, don’t expect him bright and bushy come Sunday morning. I go to my desk and read over the notes from the medical examiner’s office, but the whole time the lieutenant’s question eats away at me. Why would he think Hedges was at the party? Why would he shut down so quick when I asked him about it? One minute I think we have a good relationship finally, and the next he’s bawling me out in front of outsiders.

  I’m still thinking it over when my phone lights up.

  “Detective March? There’s a visitor in reception for you—Candace Walker?”

  The victim’s mother. “I’ll be right down.”

  “I want to see her, please,” she says.

  “Your daughter’s not here, Mrs. Walker. We can arrange for you to see her, though. That won’t be a problem. You can see her when she’s ready.”

  When she’s ready. The woman swallows the euphemism down and I can see her mind chewing on it, working out what it must mean for Simone not to be ready now. She sucks in her hollow cheeks, her eyes fluttering.

  If Joy Hill had a sister, a shrunken, shriveled sibling who’d gotten none of the breaks, who lived badly and suffered and made all the wrong choices, she would be a dead ringer for Simone’s mother. The resemblance between the two women is striking enough to make me wonder about Simone, what her motives were for living under Dr. Hill’s roof. Where Hill comes off as rather attractively dissipated, aged by the good life, lanky and at ease in her skin, Candace Walker is hard and grating, her mouth twisted into an involuntary frown.

  Of course, she just learned in the past ninety minutes or so that her only daughter was brutally murdered, probably after having been sexually assaulted. Under the circumstances, maybe she looks just right.

  “It’s all right, ma’am,” I say, my hand on her elbow to guide her. “We’ll take this elevator right here.”

  She’s quiet on the way up to the sixth floor. I let her through the Homicide Division door, leading her away from the interview rooms toward the lieutenant’s office, since he’s volunteered to sit in. She trails behind me, not paying much attention to her surroundings, still preoccupied with her grief. If she knew about Young’s presence, her demeanor might change.

  Bascombe stands at the door, leaning forward to take her hand. She withers before him and draws her hand back, not paying attention to what he’s saying. I see the hardness in her mouth and know why. It’s because he’s black. He sees it, too, but doesn’t take any notice, ushering her inside and onto the soft couch near the door.

  “I’ll leave you with Detective March,” he says.

  After he’s gone, she lets out a breath. I try to think of a question to ask, but for the moment I’m stumped.

  “He’s the person I talked to over the phone?”

  I nod.

  “He seems real nice.”

  “He is,” I say. “Let me begin by expressing my condolences, ma’am. I know how shocking this is, and you have my deepest sympathy.”

  The words sound hollow but I mean them. She does have my deepest sympathy, even though I took against her at first sight. She has it despite her reaction to my lieutenant. And I have nothing but the old clichés to communicate with, condolences and deep sympathy, even though what I want to tell her isn’t boilerplate at all. I understand what she is going through. Oh, I know what it is to lose a daughter. I’d like to tell her that, only I can’t. I’d like to tell her that above all others, I am the right man for the job.

  It would mean nothing to her, though, and I don’t have the words.

  “It is shocking,” she says. “That’s exactly what it is. But let me tell you something right now: I am not shocked. I’m not surprised, I mean, that this would happen. It’s just . . . For this to happen to her. After all she’s been through. It’s not right, it’s just not.”

  She scrubs a hand over her face, dragging her eyes down, her nose, her lips.

  “My girl had every right in this world to be happy. If anybody deserved it, she did—and trust me, nobody wanted it more. She loved being alive, my little Mona.” She goes to her purse for a tissue, then balls it in her fist. “And he seemed so good for her at first.”

  “Jason Young?”

  She nods. “Early on, she took after me. She was a wildcat of a girl, always going with the exact wrong men. She liked them bad.” A wan smile. “And Jason, he brought some stability to her life, you know?”

  “When did they meet?”

  “I don’t know exactly. She had issues with me.” She makes quotes in the air. “And she was right to, I admit it. But one day I get a call from her and she says she has a good job and she’s not in trouble and there’s a man in her life, too. The first time I met him, I remember thinking, My baby’s safe now. I could stop worrying.” She shakes her head. “That didn’t last. From the beginning he didn’t care for me. That was fine, though, ’cause I understood why. She’d told him, you know. About . . . everything.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “Everything?”

  “You don’t know, then.” She lets out a little moan. “I thought you could look on the computer or something and find everything out.”

  “What did she tell him?” I ask.

  “I have to say it out loud?” She takes a deep breath. “It was my ex-husband, Simone’s stepfather. He used to do it when I was at work and they were alone together. Starting when she was eleven or twelve.”

  The pulse in my temple starts to pound.

  “They said I was wrong not to believe her, and maybe I was. The school counselor ended up reporting it, and they took him away to jail. After that, though, whenever there was a man in my life, I was always afraid, you know? That something might happen or she might say that something did. She could be very manipulative. She was always very mature for her age.”

  “And this went on for how long?” I ask, my voice dry.

  “She was fourteen, I think, when they arrested him. She moved out when she was sixteen, into a foster home out in the suburbs. Those people had a lot of trouble with her. After high school, we kind of lost touch for a while. I used to have a substance abuse problem, but I got that sorted out.”

  “Were you arrested?”

  “For the drugs?” She shakes her head. “I fell in love is what happened. I met somebody and we were together awhile, and we both ended up going to rehab.” She starts counting on her fingers. “That was eight and a half years ago. The relationship didn’t work out, but once I was clean, I stayed that way. Got myself some work, a place to live, and I never looked back.”

  “Okay. So Simone told Jason about all this, and as a result he wasn’t your biggest fan. But you said he was good for her?”

  “At first he was. They were so happy before. They had them a nice house, he bought her a new car. I remember on Saturdays, after they were out shopping, they would pull up
in my driveway and she’d come in and show me all the things she got. It was sweet, like she was my little girl again. He would wait in the car, listening to the radio or something, but that was fine. I didn’t have a problem with it.”

  “What changed then?”

  “He got so strict with her. So controlling. She would call me on the phone because he said I was a bad influence. She couldn’t visit me no more. Then he started taking things away from her. He took her credit cards. He even sold her car, and she loved that car. But I would tell her maybe he was right. She was raised without any discipline, so whenever there was discipline, she always bucked.”

  “Your daughter had separated from Jason, is that right? Was it a legal separation?”

  “She just left, that’s all I know. It was after a big fight. The other thing, in addition to how controlling he got, was he started getting religious, too. He started telling her how she had to dress and who she could be friends with. She couldn’t have any men friends. It was getting scary. Every time she called, I kept expecting her to say he’d hit her.”

  “Did she say that?”

  “No. She never said it to me, anyway. But she wouldn’t have, because one of her things was that she always wanted to look successful in my eyes.”

  “To make you proud,” I say.

  “It was more like a competition. Since I failed in life, she was showing me that’s not how she was gonna end up.” Her face goes dead a moment; then she forces a smile. “But like I said, I could understand that. I wasn’t a perfect mother.”

  “She never told you what the fight was about, then.”

  “All she said was, ‘I outgrew him.’ That was it. She changed jobs and moved in with that professor woman—and that was a terrible decision, too. That woman, Joy is her name, she was just as bad, just as controlling. That’s what Simone said. Always wanting to know her comings and goings, always trying to squeeze more money out of her. I told her she could come live with me if she wanted. But she didn’t. It was habit by then, being used by people. That’s what they all did; they used her. He did, that woman did, everyone did. I was the only one . . . She should have come to me, shouldn’t she? This would never have happened.”

  There’s clearly no love lost between Candace and Joy Hill. Through the window I can see Bascombe leaning over Aguilar’s cubicle to confer. I need to get into that interview with Jason Young, but first I need something I can use, a lever to pry him open.

  “Mrs. Walker,” I say. “According to Dr. Hill, your daughter recently had a falling out with Jason over a loan he promised to make—”

  “Oh, that.” She pounces on the subject, eyes brightening. “What a scheme that was. It was all the professor lady’s fault because of the rent being behind. She wanted money from Simone or else. So she put the thumbscrews on her, and what could she do? Jason has lots of money—he works three different jobs, did you know that?—so of course she goes to him. And he says fine, I’ll give you the money, but there’s something you have to give me first. She had to sleep with him again. So he was paying for it, basically, like she was some kind of street hooker.”

  “And when was this exactly?”

  “That was maybe two, maybe three weeks ago? It was before Thanksgiving, I know that.” She shrugs. “Simone told me about it afterward. She was very upset. She didn’t know what to do without that money, and she couldn’t get him to pay up.”

  “Did he come around after that? To Dr. Hill’s house?”

  She pauses awhile, thinking the question over. “He’s the one.”

  “Did she ever tell you that he’d been to the house? Maybe she saw him outside on the street? Maybe he came to the door?”

  “Yes.”

  “She told you that?”

  “Yes, she told me. He would go to the house and try to come in, but she wouldn’t let him. She told him to go away. Go away or she’d call the police.”

  “You’re sure about this? You’d testify in court?”

  A pause. “Yes, I will. So help me God, I will.”

  I get up and go to the door, signaling the lieutenant.

  “Detective,” she says. “It’s not right this happening to her. My girl wanted one thing in life, and that was to be happy. She at least deserved that.”

  SUNDAY, DECEMBER 6 — 11:09 A.M.

  Jason Young watches me from across the table, the familiar hunted look creeping into his eyes as I unpack one stack of papers after another: my notes from the scene, the preliminaries from the ME, transcripts of the statements Dr. Hill made last night to Aguilar and Mrs. Walker just completed with me, the photos from the scene, facedown on the table. And a lot of unrelated paperwork to pad it all out. I’m sending a message through this bit of theater. We have everything. We know everything. Tell me a lie and I’ll see through it because the facts are spelled out right here.

  I square up a fresh legal pad in front of me, pen poised. “Now. Mr. Young. Why don’t we start with some basics? Where you live, where you work, that kind of thing.”

  He glances from me to Bascombe, who sits to my left a few feet back, arms crossed. The wheels are turning. He’s trying to work out how much we really know. All I’m after for now is to get him talking, though. I need a baseline read on the man, to see what he’s like when he tells the truth. That way it will be easier to spot the deception later on.

  “Don’t you already know that stuff?” he asks.

  “These are just preliminaries we have to get out of the way.”

  He sits back in his chair. “What was the question again?”

  “Let’s start with your address.”

  He gives me the street address of the apartment where Aguilar and I first spotted him. I write it down like it’s new information.

  “And where do you work?”

  “I’m an assistant manager at the Luggage Outlet on Richmond.”

  “Okay.” I make another note. “And that’s your only employer?”

  His eyes narrow. “No.”

  I’ve caught him by surprise with the question. He scans the stacks of paper in front of me, probably wondering what else I have in there. Good. I want him to wonder.

  “You have three jobs, isn’t that right?”

  He nods slowly. “But only the Luggage Outlet is full time. I work nights and some weekends for Blunt Ministries, packing orders and duplicating DVDs, and there’s a friend of mine with a landscaping business who hires me on big jobs maybe once, twice a month.”

  “Doing all that,” Bascombe says, “you must not have a lot of free time, Jason.”

  “Not really.”

  “So what’s your typical day look like? Take yesterday for instance. Walk us through that.”

  “Yesterday wasn’t typical.”

  “Just for instance,” I say. “Did you go into the Luggage Outlet at all?”

  He shakes his head. “On Saturdays I go into the Blunt warehouse around ten—that’s off of Twenty-sixth Street—and I’m there pretty much all day, until maybe six or seven, depending on the volume of orders from the week. People order DVDs and over the weekend I do the duplicating and packaging; then the reverend will take them to the post office Monday morning.”

  “The reverend?”

  “Reverend Blunt. You know . . . Curtis Blunt? He’s on the local radio.”

  “Is that his church you were going to this morning?” I ask.

  “He doesn’t really have a church. It’s more like a ministry. He has his show, and he makes videos of his teaching.”

  “And he was with you yesterday?”

  He shakes his head. “Not the whole day. He came by in the morning, but mostly I work alone. I get more done that way. The reverend’s really talkative when he’s there, so it’s hard to keep going.”

  “What about lunch?” I ask. “You took a break, right? Where’d you go?”

  “I’m not working three jobs so I can go out for lunch, man. I brought my lunch with me. That’s what I do.”

  “All right, then. Why a
re you working three jobs?”

  He shrugs. “Stupidity.”

  Bascombe chuckles. “You wanna elaborate on that for us?”

  “I’m working three jobs because, until about a year ago, I was spending money I didn’t have on a lifestyle I didn’t need. I had a mortgage and two car notes and about forty grand in credit card debt, which I was rolling from one card to the other. It kept growing and growing and I was barely making forty a year before taxes. So I said enough is enough.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I cut up the cards, sold the house, got rid of the cars, bought a junky used truck and started working sixty hours a week or more to put a dent in the debt. I’m getting out from under all that.”

  “And what about your wife?” I ask. “You are married. I notice you’re wearing a ring.”

  He lifts his hand and stares at the ring, like he’s only just noticed it.

  “Yeah,” he says. “I am.”

  “What did she think about all this?”

  Young starts shaking his head in slow motion, a hard smile on his lips. “That’s what all this is about, isn’t it? You’ve got me here because of Simone.”

  I give nothing away. “That’s her name? Simone Young.”

  He snorts. “She doesn’t call herself that anymore, but yeah. Simone Young. And all this”—he waves his arm over my stacked papers—“it’s for nothing, because whatever story she told you isn’t true, okay? It’s not even her fault, though. It’s Candace, isn’t it? I saw her out there when the other detective brought in the coffee. Listen, that woman is a bad influence on Simone, and if you separate the two of them and just ask Simone what happened, she’ll eventually tell you the truth. But not with her mother in the room.”

  “The truth about what?” I ask.

  “Come on. I’m not stupid, man. I see what all this is. But you know what? It’s he said/she said, because nobody else was there.”

  “What’s he said/she said?”

  “You know what.”

  Bascombe chuckles again, acting like he’s impressed with the performance. “You gotta spell it out for us, though. For the record.”