by Layton Green
“Mac was sloppy,” he said.
“That, and Ari was fast. Mina knew what she was doing. The gas tank exploded seconds after Ari dragged you out.”
Preach exhaled with the thought of how close to death they had come. He looked back to the chief and saw a shadow crouching behind her gaze.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Preach said. “Did something else happen to her?”
The chief was having trouble meeting his gaze. “No, no. She was released hours after the accident and stayed by your bed all night. I relieved her thirty minutes ago. The nurse assured us you were fine despite the head wound—you took quite a knock, buster—so Ari left to open the bookstore.”
It suddenly dawned on him. “The mayor,” he said quietly, with the full realization that the murderer was sitting right beside him.
The chief gave a slow nod, her expression grave. She deserved an Oscar. “Dead. Kirby killed her.”
His next question fell away, dropped to the bottom of the abyss.
“What?”
“He found the photos.” Her lips compressed. “In my desk.”
“Oh God.”
“He’s already turned himself in.”
They were both quiet for a moment, and Preach had the sudden knowledge that the chief was laughing on the inside, cackling with glee that Kirby had done her work for her.
No, he thought, that’s not right. She wasn’t a monster in that way—just an instrument of revenge. Still, her actions had set all of this in motion, and he blamed her for every single thing that had happened. Including Kirby.
“Mac and Mina?” he asked grimly.
“In jail. Ari told us everything.” The chief rose. “I’ve got to head in, and there’s someone waiting to see you. We’ll talk about the rest when you’re well. Take your time coming back.”
She reached over to pat his hand, and he forced himself not to recoil. She held his gaze for an uncomfortable amount of time, then said, “It’s all over now.”
After the chief left, before he could start to process what had happened and form a plan of action, the last person he expected to see entered the room.
“You look like hell, Joe,” Wade said with a grunt. He was looking at his old friend with guarded relief.
“So do you. And I’m the one in the hospital.”
Wade chuckled as he approached the bed, easing the tension. “Yeah, well, I don’t have any flowers. Just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“Thanks. I mean it.”
Wade’s face tightened. “I came to say that Mac crossed the line with you. I also heard you told him to back off me. Listen, if you need anything, any testimony . . . you can count on me.”
It was a brave gesture. Mac still had plenty of cronies.
Wade stuck out his hand. Preach looked down at it and thought about how easy it was to be childhood friends. Did you live next door to one another? Check. Play on the same sports team, share the same homeroom? Instant bond.
But then we age and formulate our responses to the challenges of life, to politics and taxes and religion, develop our agenda. We grow apart, sometimes to polar extremes, wondering where our old friends went so wrong without stopping to think how we might have, too.
Preach rejected Wade’s attempt to shake his hand, instead pulling the grip tight, forearm to forearm.
Just like in the old days.
Preach left the hospital an hour later. He called his mother to let her know he was okay, then called Ari and got her voicemail. He would swing by the bookstore as soon as he took care of a few pressing matters.
First he returned to the station, where the number of reporters seemed to have metastasized. They gawked as he pushed through them without a word, bypassed the main entrance, and strode to the jail. He caught a glimpse of himself in one of the glass doors: unshaven, hair disheveled, wrist in a splint, bruised neck, a huge bandage covering the left side of his head.
He paced the long hallway and stopped in front of Kirby’s cell, two cells down from where Belker had been. His partner was sitting in his cot with his back against the wall, arms slumped at his sides, chin tucked into his chest. He barely lifted his head as Preach approached.
A shudder of sadness rolled through him at the despair smothering his partner’s face. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?” Kirby asked, in a voice that sounded like his soul had been vacuumed right out of it.
“For not handling it better. The photos.”
“Trust me, it wouldn’t have mattered.”
Preach wasn’t so sure.
They regarded each other in silence, and then Kirby’s head slowly bent forward, as if he didn’t have the will to hold it up.
“Is there anything else I should know?” Preach said quietly. “About the chief? Something you discussed with the mayor that might help with an arrest?”
“We didn’t talk about that,” Kirby said in monotone. “And you should change your email password; I watched you type it in one day and told Monica. I was the rat.”
Preach stood there for a few more moments. His weight had sunk into his heels. “Hang in there, Kirby,” he said finally. “We’ll get you a good lawyer.”
No response.
“And I’ll do everything I can to help your family.”
Kirby’s eyes slowly lifted. “Don’t let them fall, Preach,” he whispered. “Don’t let them fall.”
Preach didn’t go into the station. Instead, he got in his car and, while the reporters clamored for his attention, mentally prepared for a call with Internal Affairs. He had to convince them to detain Chief Higgins while he searched her house, pored over her phone and laptop, while the evidence was still fresh. It wouldn’t be easy, and maybe she had covered her tracks too well, but he had to try. Kirby admitting he was the leak didn’t help matters, but there was plenty of circumstantial evidence against the chief, and Preach was banking on Carrie Hollings to provide an eyewitness ID.
Yet there was a loose end to resolve before he went into battle with the chief of police. When he made his stand, a stand he knew would be very contentious and very public, he needed to have a clean record.
There could be no appearance of impropriety, no lingering doubt as to his mental state.
He needed that certificate of release from his aunt.
55
Preach hugged his aunt tight when she opened the door. She was the one person he needed to see, besides Ari, who might help wash the filth away.
The mayor and three other citizens dead on his watch. Kirby rotting in jail. Chief Higgins still a free woman, sitting behind her desk with her Girl Scout smiles.
Aunt Janice looped an arm through his. “Rough day,” she said, the compassion in her eyes telling him she had seen the news.
He gave a tired nod. “I can’t really discuss anything, but there’s something very important I need to do today. And I need a certificate of sound mental health to do it. I understand you might not give it to me, but . . . do you think we can finish?”
Without a word, she walked him into her office and sat behind her desk, motioning for him to take the couch. She had assumed her professional demeanor, and he couldn’t read her expression. It was childish, but he almost felt as if his aunt was betraying him by observing him in such a clinical manner after all that had happened.
Hopefully, after today, he would never have to visit her here again.
“We’ve talked enough about the past,” she said, surprising him.
“We have?”
She folded her hands on the desk. “We should discuss the present.”
“Oh.”
“How would you characterize your current emotional state?”
Preach lowered his eyes. “Devastated. Four people have died. My partner is a good man, and he’s in jail for murder. But I feel one hundred percent in control of my emotions. Able to carry out my duties.”
“At any time during the course of the investigation, have you experienced a state of
mind similar to what occurred in Atlanta?”
“No,” he said, truthfully.
“Why do you think that is?”
“As I said before, I don’t think anything else will hit me like that again. I think I’ve—” his eyes flicked away—“seen the worst.”
“And if you haven’t?”
“Then God help us all.”
She was quiet for a moment, studying him.
“Look,” he said. “I won’t sit here and tell you there’s nothing out there that could shock me again, because that’s an impossible statement. But I can tell you that in all my years as a homicide officer, that was the only incident that caused me to stumble.”
She kept looking at him as if making a physiognomic evaluation, judging the truth of his words by his face. Finally she relaxed her stare. “Joey, I’ve already prepared your certificate. I’ll sign it for you now.”
“What? You have? I . . .”
He trailed off, stunned, knowing he should accept the gift and walk out of there. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to leave without knowing more. “What do you think happened?” he asked. “In Atlanta? By Ricky’s bedside?”
“My assessment of you is that you are a functioning human being. A highly empathetic person who didn’t know how to handle the depth of your emotions when you were young, so you pushed them away until they exploded. A person who has chosen a profession that is at times . . . challenging for that level of sensitivity. But I truly believe you have it under control, or you would not have been able to perform your duties so effectively over the years. You had one incident as a police officer. One. True, it bore an unfortunate result, but I’d wager we need a detective with your compassion working the streets far more than we need a callous officer with no possibility of a mental lapse.”
It took him a moment to process her words. “I don’t know what to say.”
She stood and smiled. “I’ll get the certificate. What about a glass of water? You look like you could use one.”
“And some Tylenol, if you have any. I left mine in the car.”
“I think I can find some.”
After she left, he put his hands on his knees and released a deep sigh of relief that seemed to reach back through the decades. It was over. Truly over. He had screwed up, he felt certain things on a deep and visceral level, and his pent-up emotions had gotten the better of him a few times. But he was normal. He could start his life again.
Right after he put Chief Higgins away.
He stood to stretch his legs, and found his eyes once again drawn to the painting of the girl with the ibises. He found it so evocative. She was clutching her teal shawl to her throat, almost protectively, and when he looked closer he noticed that, in contrast to her smooth right hand, the girl’s left hand was curved and frail, almost as if it had aged prematurely.
The girl’s head was turned to the right, one eye hidden but the other facing the viewer. As if the girl knew a secret and had turned back, wondering if the observer knew as well. And there was something else . . . with a start, he realized that the girl, with her delicate features and smooth white skin, her dark hair and eyes, bore a strong resemblance to Deirdre and Ari.
He had to know who the artist was. He searched for “girl with two ibises painting” on his cell phone as a train whistled outside the window.
It was a Degas, which surprised him. He thought Degas painted only ballet dancers, like the one in Deirdre’s room. The painting in his aunt’s office was called, appropriately, Young Woman with Ibis.
The train whistled again, and Preach’s eyes drifted to the other framed print, a Monet depicting a dreamy blue-green pond filled with pink lotus flowers.
The Monet seemed to spark another memory, and he kept staring at it until he figured out what it was: the lotus flowers in the painting bore a close resemblance to Deirdre’s pink, lotus-shaped jewelry box.
Preach’s eyes snapped back to the first painting.
Those strange, blood-red birds seemed to be both protecting the girl and trumpeting something to the sky. As if the girl harbored a secret, and her guardians wanted the world to know—and someone to pay.
Beauty and blood, the birds screamed. Sadness. Mystery. Pain. Retribution.
The train whistled a third time, long and keening. A train whose tracks dissected the woods that stretched behind his aunt’s building—the same woods that began near J. T. Belker’s house and ran right past Farley’s Robertson’s condo.
A prickling began along his forearms, spreading to the rest of his body in a shuddering wave of gooseflesh.
He berated himself. This was absurdity of the highest order. Sure, his aunt’s and the chief’s faces were somewhat similar, if you disregarded the chief’s hair color and oily skin. The sketch artist’s rendering was vague enough to apply to both. His aunt was the right age and had the same height and stocky build as the woman described by Deirdre’s sister—but so was Chief Higgins.
It was the chief who had access to Rohypnol, who knew how to stage a crime scene.
Aunt Janice is a psychologist, is brilliant and always has been. She has access to drugs and could easily figure out a crime scene.
Everything I have against the chief is circumstantial.
And those same circumstances apply to Aunt Janice.
Good God, this was ridiculous! He stood and laughed at himself. There was one glaring detail, he thought triumphantly, that exonerated his aunt: the strand of red hair in the sketch, the feature that had cemented his suspicion of the chief.
Preach thought about it further and felt his face grow hot. Aunt Janice keeps a red clown wig in her car. For the kids at the cancer ward.
He tried feverishly to rule out his aunt. Unfortunately, her clown wig was fairly lifelike and made for a woman, as opposed to the garish Ronald McDonald variety. A quick glance, with only a bit of hair sticking out from underneath a bowler hat, could cause confusion.
He whipped his head around, desperate for answers, and saw the huge piano squatting a few feet to his left. An instrument his aunt didn’t even play.
He remembered the one object still remaining in Deirdre’s bedroom, and his hands started to tremble.
A Steinway piano.
He kept looking and noticed the bonsai calendar. Deirdre had owned a Japanese woodblock. Altogether, his aunt’s office contained a Degas painting, a pink lotus flower, Japanese art, and a piano.
Just like Deirdre’s room.
Madness. This is madness.
He cast a furtive glance through the open doorway where his aunt had disappeared. The hallway led to a communal kitchen where she was rummaging for Tylenol. Feeling feverish, he shot off a text to his mother.
-Do you know if Deirdre Hollings ever sought counseling at school?-
The response came within seconds.
-I think so. Not sure. Why?-
Preach swallowed. Not the negative reply he was praying for. He took a deep breath and sent one more text, a stab in the dark, not expecting his mother to reply.
-Has Aunt Janice ever stalked anyone?-
The response was delayed this time, but when it came, his throat constricted and he kept blinking his eyes, as if he could change his reality if he only tried hard enough.
-How do you know about that?? Talk in person-
Preach let the phone go limp in his hand.
His aunt had met Deirdre Hollings during her internship at the high school.
Janice had counseled her, maybe even learned about whatever had happened, and developed a bond.
Then she had become obsessed with her.
“Found some,” his aunt said, as she pushed through the door. She approached with a glass of water and two white pills but stopped when she saw his face. She moved behind the desk and set the glass down. “Joey?”
“Tell me it wasn’t you,” he whispered. He felt as if an earthquake had split the ground beneath his feet, and he was teetering on the edge of oblivion. “Tell me you didn’t recreate this offi
ce in her image.”
“Honey, what are you talking about?”
She had dropped the professional demeanor, approaching him with a hand extended and palm up, a concerned aunt. He wanted to embrace her, let her soothe him as she always did, but he had to know.
He looked her in the eye. “Did you kill Farley Robertson, Damian Black, and Elliott Fenton?”
“What in the world are you—?”
Her other hand whipped out from behind her back, gripping a syringe. He tried to step away, but she was fast, and he had not been expecting the maneuver.
Because, of course, she was his aunt.
Because he loved her.
She injected him. He shoved her away, but a numbing sensation was already spreading.
“I knew if anyone figured it out, it would be you. I always felt you were meant to be my son and not your mother’s.” She glanced down at the syringe. “You came here to arrest me, didn’t you?”
“No,” he whispered as he tried to stumble toward her. Instead he toppled to the floor, managing a weak cry for help.
“Everyone else has gone home,” she said, almost sadly. “No one’s going to hear you.” She dragged him behind the desk, next to a suitcase. He tried to fight her but could barely move his limbs. She brushed a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, Joey. I really am. We can’t keep this between us, can we?”
“No,” he croaked.
“But they were monsters. All of them.”
“So are you,” he said.
“I’m sorry you feel that way. This doesn’t change my feelings for you. But I understand.”
“What did you give me?”
“It’s just something to keep you sedated while I catch a plane. I’ll send someone for you once I land. I won’t, of course, be coming back.”
“Why?” he gasped. “What did they do?”
She regarded him with a somber expression, poised above him with the needle still gripped in her hand. The somberness turned to sadness, and then pain, and then a white-hot anger so intense it caused her veins to raise like welts along her neck.