“You,” Bender seethed. “You . . . pompous, arrogant, convicted felon piece of shit! Who the hell are you to tell me anything about police work?”
“That’s right, I forgot,” Rein said, turning to look at the road alongside the courthouse as the cars raced past. “You’re the master detective who caught the Omnikiller. Isn’t that what the press release said? I read all about it in the papers. There’s still reporters trying to talk to me, you know. I was hoping I could just let the story you gave them suffice.” He glanced back at Bender. “I mean, really, what could I add?”
Bender looked back at the courthouse doors, making sure no one was coming who could overhear them. He moved closer to Rein and said, “What do you want?”
Rein stood up and walked toward Bender’s unmarked police car, a brand-new SUV, all black, with tinted windows so dark they were like mirrors. “I told you, I want to talk about your case. Get in the car. I need you to drive me somewhere.”
“Jesus H. Christ, am I a taxi service now?” Bender asked. He pulled out his keys and unlocked the doors, then tossed the useless evidence bag in the backseat. He slid into the driver’s seat and started the car. “You’re lucky I don’t want to be seen in public talking to you, or else you’d be taking the shoe leather express. What do you want to tell me?”
Rein reached in his pocket for a small scrap of paper bearing an address on Fawn Drive, only a few miles from where they were. He passed it to Bender and said, “Over the past year, there’s been six reports of suspicious vehicles following women or road rage incidents where a male was swerving in the lane all around them, possibly trying to get them to pull over. It’s always at night, always on some back road.”
“And how do you know that?” Harv asked.
“I filed freedom of information act requests at every police department in this part of the county,” Rein said. “You’d be amazed what they hand over if you fill out the right forms.”
“Turley’s the guy,” Bender said. “He had the emergency light in his car, for Christ’s sake! He was in the right area, at the right time, trying to pull someone over.”
“Monica Gere didn’t say he had that kind of light,” Rein said. “She said he had red and blue lights, like a police car.”
Bender sneered. “Oh, you’d just love that, wouldn’t you? You’d just about cream your jeans if this turns out to be a cop. Why, so someone can finally replace you as the most recent cop arrested in this county?”
“I never said this was a cop,” Rein said. “Think about it. Six reports of women being followed, but none of them lead to an encounter. None of them are successful. Criminals evolve. They learn. So what does he do? He gets himself a light bar and a uniform. That works just fine. And now that he’s got a method that works, it’s only going to get worse.”
Bender glanced at Rein as he talked. Still the same old smug asshole he’d been back in their county detective days. Except now, Rein had a beard that grew down to his chest and clothes so worn out they looked like rags. “What’s your deal now?” Bender asked. “You some kind of homeless investigator? You riding the rails solving mysteries for the other hobos?”
“Can’t I just want to help?” Rein said.
“Please,” Bender said. “I know you, man. I know the real you. You don’t do this shit because you want to help. You did it for the attention, and to prove everyone else wrong, and maybe now you do it out of guilt for what you did to that little girl you hit when you were drunk driving, but none of it, not any of it, is because you want to help.”
“Maybe,” Rein said. “Or maybe I just can’t stand to sit back and watch someone like you do it so badly.”
* * *
Harv Bender checked the address on the slip of paper and the numbers on the mailboxes as they drove along Fawn Drive. “This is the one, right here.” He pulled up to the curb in front of the house and said, “Well, Rein, have a nice day. Feel free to drop dead and never bother me again, if that’s all right with you.”
Rein looked out the window at the house. A red Honda was parked in the driveway. “You’re coming with me,” he said. “Bring a notebook and a pen.”
Bender leaned forward to look at the house. “What are you talking about? Who lives here?”
“Monica Gere, your victim,” Rein said, letting himself out before Bender could stop him.
“Are you crazy?” Bender hissed, keeping his voice down. He hurried out of the car to get hold of Rein and drag him back. “This chick is nuts! She’ll freak out if we show up like this. I called her five times. When she finally called me back she told me she’d sue me if I didn’t stop harassing her!”
“Too late now,” Rein said, raising his head toward the front windows of the house. A shadow passed behind the curtains, peeling one of their edges back just enough to peer through. Rein headed up the driveway, waving.
“This is bullshit, Rein. Even for you,” Bender called out, not moving from the sidewalk. “I’m not getting sued for you. Forget it.”
Rein pulled open the screen door and knocked. The curtains stopped moving, but the door stayed closed. “Monica?” Rein said, leaning in. He could see someone standing behind the door’s frosted-glass windows. “I’m Jacob Rein, and I’m here with Chief Bender from the county detectives. Listen, I know you don’t want to talk to the police, and I understand that. We’re not here to force you to do anything. I just want you to give me a minute of your time. Hear me out, and then I’ll go away if you want.”
Monica Gere’s voice, fragile and faint, came through the door. “I read that they arrested the man who did this.”
“It was the wrong guy,” Rein said. “The cops screwed up. They did it with good intentions, but to be honest, without your help, they went down the wrong path. The real bad guy’s still out there. I was hoping you could help us with that.”
“Are you a police officer?” she asked.
“Why, don’t I look like one?” Rein asked. When she didn’t answer, he smiled and said, “I’m kidding. No, ma’am, I’m not a police officer. I just know a lot about the kind of person who hurt you, and I wanted to tell you something about him.”
He could hear the floorboards creak behind the door but it didn’t open, and she didn’t speak.
“You see, right now he’s congratulating himself on picking someone he thinks is too weak to come forward,” Rein said. “He’s thinking he has all the power. He figures he made you afraid and you’ll stay that way for the rest of your life. What he doesn’t know is that you hold his entire future in your hands. You are the one who decides what happens to him. You want him to get away and do it to someone else? That’s fine. Do nothing, and that’s what will happen. But there’s another path. A path where you help us find him, and we drag him in front of you in chains. Where you watch him weep and beg for mercy and collapse when the judge sentences him to prison for the rest of his life. It’s up to you. Choose to live in fear, or fight back and teach him what it means to be afraid.”
He waited, looking at the door. Behind him, Harv Bender was leaning against his SUV, shaking his head.
“Step away from the front door,” he heard Monica say.
Rein stepped back and let the screen door close.
The deadbolt on the door clicked as it turned. The handle beneath it jiggled and the door came open to reveal a disheveled, stricken-looking Monica Gere. She looked past him at Harv Bender, seeing his badge, and then at Rein, taking in his disheveled appearance. She locked the screen door and stood behind it. “I’ll talk to you like this, but you can’t come in.”
“That’s fine,” Rein said. He waved for Bender to come up, enjoying the way the man’s chubby face tightened and turned red. “Miss Gere would like to speak with you,” Rein said.
“Kiss my ass,” Bender said under his breath as he made his way toward the front door.
“That’s close enough,” Monica said, halting Bender before he could come any closer. “Are you the man I talked to on the phone?”
“I’m Chief Bender of the county detectives,” Bender said. He saw Rein roll his eyes. Bender tried again and said, “I’m Harv, ma’am. I’d like to help you with your case if you don’t mind.”
“What is it you want to know?”
“First, what makes you so positive this was a police officer?” Bender asked.
Rein held up his hand. “Hold that thought, Miss Gere. We don’t know anything about the suspect. Let’s start with the basics, okay?”
“All right,” she said.
“Was he white, black, or something else?”
“White,” she said.
“How do you know that?” Rein asked.
“I saw his arm when he reached into the car to grab me.”
“Was he a tall guy, or short?”
“Average,” she said.
“What’s average? My height?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. Her voice quickened and she seemed short of breath. “He was standing over me while I was in the car, and then he—then he—oh God.”
“It’s okay,” Rein said gently. “Do you want to take a break?”
“I need to sit down,” Monica said.
“That’s fine,” Rein said. “You take as long as you like. Me and Harv aren’t doing anything except working on this case. We’ll wait out here all day if you want, right, Harv?”
“Rein,” Bender muttered.
Monica threw the lock open on the screen door and said, “This is stupid. Just come in.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Rein said as Monica retreated into the living room. He held up his bare wrist and looked at Bender. “What was that, five minutes?” Bender’s eyes narrowed, and Rein added, “Maybe it was ten. I can’t be sure. I might be slipping. Let’s say it was ten.”
“Excuse the mess,” Monica said as they entered. She was curled up on a chair next to a dark fireplace, with her legs tucked beneath her. The living room table was littered with takeout food containers, all of them nearly still full. “I haven’t left the house since I came home from the hospital,” she said. “You’re the first people I’ve spoken to.”
Rein and Bender both sat down on the couch across from her. “Is there anyone we can call for you? A friend or family member?” Rein asked.
“I haven’t told anyone,” she whispered. “I just want it to go away.”
“It doesn’t go away,” Rein said. “Not on its own.”
“There’s an agency in the county for victim assistance,” Bender said. “Their number will be in the packet of information you got at the hospital. If you give them a call, they can help. They’re real good.”
“I’ll think about it,” Monica said. “So what else do you want to know about him?”
“Anything,” Rein said. “Any little detail you can remember. A tattoo. A chipped tooth. Particular phrases he used when he spoke. Whatever you can think of.”
“He was mean,” she said. “He was strong.” She gritted her teeth until her jaw quivered. “He was just so angry.”
Bender wrote as she spoke, holding his pen on the page, waiting for her to continue. She didn’t. He looked up at Rein, who frowned. “Okay, that’s good. Is there anything about the way he looked that you can tell us?”
“It all happened too fast,” she whispered. She covered her eyes with her hand. “All I can see is the bright lights flashing and him holding me down! Why did he do that? I was just trying to go home!”
Bender shook his head. This was a dead end. Rein hated to agree with him, but Monica had shut down. There was no point pushing her any farther.
“I’m going to leave you my card,” Bender said. “It has my cell on it. You can call me day or night if you remember anything. I’m here to help. I mean that.”
They stood up from the couch and Monica Gere shivered. Her hand stayed pressed against her face, shielding her from seeing them. Her voice was soft and weak when she said, “He was a smoker.”
Rein and Bender stopped moving.
“He threw his cigarette away as he walked up to my car.”
* * *
Harv Bender carried two full bags of trash down the driveway from Monica Gere’s house. He’d gathered up all the takeout containers and whatever was stuffed inside her kitchen trash can. She’d told him he didn’t have to. He did it anyway.
Rein was waiting for him at the car. “You mind giving me a lift out to where Monica was found?”
“Why, you going to pick up every cigarette butt you find along the side of the road?” Bender asked, wiping his hands on his pants.
“No, just the one where she saw him flick it,” Rein said.
“Jesus Christ, you really are crazy,” Bender said. “Come on, get in.”
Once they were in, Harv started the car and pulled away from the curb. “The chances of us finding that cigarette butt are slim and none. The chances of it having any DNA on it after sitting out in the woods all this time are even less. What’s the point?”
“Maybe he smokes a cigarette before he approaches each woman. If we can find it, we can identify the brand, and you can start pulling video from every gas station in the area to look for any white males of average height who purchase those kinds of cigarettes. After that, you see if one of them bought those particular cigarettes on any of the days marked on the calendar.”
“What calendar?”
“This calendar,” Rein said, pulling a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket. “I marked off all the days of the other incidents where women were being followed.”
Bender unfolded the page as he steered, seeing Rein’s handwriting scribbled all over it. “You have any idea how long it’s going to take me to look for cigarette butts at all these places in the woods and then go through all that video?”
“Who are you kidding, Harv? You’ll get one of your peons to do it for you.”
“Yeah, but still. They’ll be tied up doing this crap instead of other stuff I need them to do.” He slid the page into his binder, tucking it away for later. “It must be hell for you, huh?”
“Seeing you as the chief of county detectives while I live in disgrace, Harv?” Rein asked. “I try not to think about it, to be honest.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Bender said. “I meant, you know, owning a Ferrari and not being able to drive it.”
Rein turned his head. “You’ll have to walk me through this one. I’m not following.”
Bender grimaced, struggling to form the concept in his head into the right words. “Okay, see, you’re like a person who loves to race. You love nothing better than to get out there on the open road and put the pedal to the metal. It’s what you live for. This case, it’s like a long, clean stretch of track to you. And you’ve got a Ferrari, right? It’s faster than anything else on the road. But instead of being out there racing, leaving everybody in the dust, your Ferrari just sits there. It’s like you got locked out of your own race car and can’t find the keys to get back in.”
Rein stared through the window, watching the cars go past. “Yeah, it’s something like that,” he said.
CHAPTER 17
Therse is family you are born with, and family you choose.
At Carrie Santero’s age, her mother was already married. She had started a home, delivered a baby, and before that, she had toured the country with various bands. All of her mother’s stories were about long nights of banjo music and becoming one with the universe and other fake-hippy bullshit. In just one more year, Carrie would be the same age her mother was when she left home and never came back.
Whenever Carrie’s best friend, Molly, had offered to pierce her in some new body part, normally with nothing more than a safety pin heated by a lighter, she’d think of her mother when the pain hit. Whenever they’d mosh at basement clubs in distant cities, she’d think of her mother when it was time to jump up and kick the biggest asshole on the floor.
She and Molly would chug vodka from whatever bottle they’d stolen from the local stores. Sometimes they’d steal it from Penny,
Molly’s mom, and refill it with water. Molly was a goofy drunk, prone to collapsing in fits of laughter and passing out. Carrie never minded. She’d go outside and sit, looking up at the sky, and picture her mother. She imagined her dancing in some distant field, surrounded by dandelions, barefoot in the mud, surrounded by a drum circle or jam band or whatever lame-ass local musicians she’d attached herself to, oh so at one with the fucking universe, and Carrie would raise both her middle fingers and bare her teeth in rage.
It was the same feeling she had the night she graduated the police academy. The same one she felt when she got sworn in as the first female patrol officer in Coyote Township. It was the same internal fuck you that kept her going now.
She didn’t hate her mother for leaving. She didn’t now, and she hadn’t then. She was angry, sure, but did not hate the woman. Not for that. Her mother’s entire life, from what Carrie knew of it, was spent running toward some imaginary land that did not exist. An illusion of what life was like before modern technology and suburbs and cell phones. A place filled with rainbows where peace and love reigned and all the happy little white girls in dreadlocks ran naked through the forest.
People like her mother hitchhiked, or picked up hitchhikers. They wound up raped, or dead, but at least they hadn’t compromised their commitment to peace and love. People like her mother believed in crystals and past lives and that all you needed was some organic carrot juice and fresh cilantro to cure cancer. They had a fiercely determined, self-centered devotion to illusion.
And that was what Carrie hated. Idiots and their illusions. Harv Bender’s illusions of power. Steve Auburn’s illusions of legacy and small-town bullshit. Mrs. Pugh’s illusion that her daughter was on some farm, grown up and waiting to come home. Her own mother’s illusions of happiness through music and peace and free love. Carrie knew different. Carrie knew it took strength, overwhelming strength, to look into the endless expanse of chaos that formed the universe, where destruction is constant, and stand up against it.
An Unsettled Grave Page 16