Jeremy wobbled, looking distraught, not knowing if he was supposed to leave or listen to the rest.
Fortunately he was spared the decision when Janet threw open the door. “Thought I heard someone,” she said.
Dillon smirked and pushed his way past her. “Come on, kid. Let’s get upwind from this asshole.”
O’Shaughnessy left the office before ten and went home to sit alone in the dark living room. The house felt different now. It was no longer the safe little place it had been. Not Tim’s, not hers, not the girls’—it was just a cold little box filled with rooms. And memories.
She hadn’t slept and shook with a coldness that penetrated her very bones.
She’d been grilled by the chief and hounded by reporters who had overheard the radio call for a break-in at her house. And then came the bad news. First, from the forensics lab and then from the city manager’s office. That and the persistent memory of taking off her clothes for Clarke and crawling into bed with him were enough to make her morning utter hell.
She looked at the picture of herself in the newspaper. A regular old celebrity, she thought miserably. Most of the article had been about the incinerator fiasco. Gus’s people had sifted it for hours and found no bones, no teeth, no guns, no knives—nothing but cold white ashes and lumps that had once been dog tags. The shutdown had cost the taxpayers eleven thousand dollars and a selectwoman friendly with Jason Carlino complained that the department should pick up the tab, if not O’Shaughnessy personally.
The blood on the windshield was type A-negative; both Carlino and Yoland were positives, one A and one O. The hair caught in the window glass was not similar to samples they had collected from the Carlino residence, nor to hairs collected from the scene where Tracy Yoland had been kidnapped.
FBI reports on the paint sample hadn’t come back yet, but with the way things were going, O’Shaughnessy didn’t hold out high hopes for a match on the truck, either. Not anymore.
Her mind kept going over it. Lyons had been perfect. Everything about him had been perfect. He had opportunity—he was the night-shift driver. He had means—he drove a city disposal truck. He had motive—he was a convicted sex offender. There was evidence—the female hair and bloodstain found in his vehicle. And his truck was orange, just like the vehicle Anne Carlino came into contact with the night she disappeared off the face of the earth. What more could you ask for? she wondered. This was Probable Cause with a capital P.
But the town’s leaders didn’t think so, nor were they convinced of the wisdom in closing down the county’s incinerator. Not on the thread of a single human hair, which, as Jason Carlino pointed out to the Patriot, was far short of finding a victim’s ring in the apartment of a known sex offender.
In the city manager’s reasoning, it would have been harmless to charge Jeremy Smyles and keep him in jail. For one thing, it would have appeased Jason Carlino and the Yolands. For another, it would have made the public feel better. If evidence developed to the contrary, or if another suspect turned up later, she could always release him. Smyles not only had the evidence, he admitted to having it. He was a known sex offender—albeit for peeping in someone’s window—and he couldn’t explain his whereabouts on the night of either crime. He belonged in jail! And for God’s sake, Kelly, he’s a retard. He’s not going to complain to anyone. You’d be off the hook if it turned out he was innocent.
O’Shaughnessy couldn’t even formulate a proper response for that one.
Tears brimmed in her eyes. Even a paint match for Lyons’s truck wouldn’t mean much right now. Paint pointed to a particular group of vehicles, not a particular vehicle. To get Lyons, she needed a direct link to his victims. She needed physical evidence. She needed to match the hair and the bloodstain she’d found in that truck to another human being. But to whom?
She set her coffee cup next to the recliner. And now someone was stalking her. Or trying to make her look like a fool. She wondered if Dillon would have that kind of nerve, that much hate. And decided he would.
There was mail in the mailbox—she hadn’t opened it in two days—and the message light was flashing on the answering machine: undoubtedly Clarke.
She looked around the house and thought of all the tears her family had shed in those rooms. Good tears and bad tears, the life and laughter of a family. She missed being a family. Nothing seemed to be working without them. And now she didn’t know if she should let the girls come back home or stay with their father. How safe was it to be with her now?
Suddenly the tears spilled over and she began to bawl. Deep throaty sobs erupted as she wondered how life could change so suddenly. She wanted Tim back. She wanted Tim to hold her. She knew that Clarke would come to her in a minute, but Clarke didn’t know her like Tim did. Clarke hadn’t shared the ups and downs that made her who she was. Clarke wasn’t part of her family and that’s what she wanted back. Her family.
She closed her eyes, squeezing back the tears. Gulls screamed outside. She could hear the thrum of traffic inching its way down her street. Rio must be backed up to the bridge, everyone trying to get out of town before the storm hit. Everyone going on with their lives while hers had stopped dead.
She set the cup on the stand and stood, grabbing tissues for her face and depositing them in the kitchen garbage. She took her sneakers from beside the back door. Then she pushed herself out the front door and sat on the steps to lace them up. The humidity was oppressive.
She ran to the sidewalk and east toward Atlantic Avenue, where fifty cars waited for their turn at the light.
She looked at the people in them, the children, the toys, the dogs, the luggage, everything mashed up against the windows. Families…
She crossed Atlantic under the shadows of the towering Dunes, jogged an alley next to the Driftwood, where Sherry Moore would be getting up and making coffee. O’Shaughnessy’s mother had lived in that condo until her fatal heart attack last fall. Now it was just a reminder of someone else lost.
Vendors rolled carts of soda and cigarettes into the hotel’s side doors; she could smell the remains of breakfast bacon, which for some reason reminded her of Tim.
She was jogging down the beach, fighting heavy sand until she reached the shoreline, and then she turned north and picked up her stride toward Strayer’s Pier.
The waves were large and explosive and the tide washed well up on the beach.
She’d fucked up. It was that simple. She’d wanted something positive to happen in her life, and when Lyons was the only thing in her sights, she came out shooting. Probably she’d jumped too fast with Clarke, too.
There was a line of reeking seaweed to follow; a tenacious family determined to get in the last hours of their vacation played among it. She zigzagged her way past them and startled a threesome of shorebirds pecking in the receding tide. O’Shaughnessy’s tears started to well again and sweat began to pour from her brow. After another mile she started looping for home.
God, she wished she could call Tim. Just to talk to him. Just to have him hold her. She turned up her street and into the driveway and up the steps to the house. Maybe it was too late for that now. Maybe she’d screwed that up as well.
She showered and drove to the men’s shelter on the harbor where the city had temporarily placed Jeremy Smyles. From there she drove him to the psychiatric clinic in Vineland, where he underwent his voluntary evaluation. She was sitting in a waiting room, ruminating over whether or not to call Tim on her cell phone, when McGuire called.
“I dropped Payne at your condo for lunch. No luck with his sketch yet. I talked with that cab fleet in Ocean City. They don’t have an orange car that’s older than three years. He says they sell them off at ninety thousand miles, about every twenty months. All the big fleets do the same, he said. The vehicle we’re looking for could have been sold to a private citizen by now. Just one more thing we need to take into consideration.”
There was a noise outside his office door just then. “Hang on a minute, Lieu.” McGu
ire cupped his hand over the receiver and yelled, “Yeah?” but no one responded. A moment later he was back on the line. “Sorry, Lieu, I thought someone came in. So what do you make of all this psychic stuff anyhow? I mean, what’s Sherry Moore like? Can she really talk to the dead?”
“She’s blind,” O’Shaughnessy said, “and she doesn’t talk to the dead, she sees memories.” Suddenly she wondered if it had been prudent to involve McGuire. For his own sake.
“You’re kidding.”
“Uh-huh. And she’s beautiful, not at all what you’d expect for a psychic. By the way, I’m taking her to Kissock’s tonight if you need to reach me. I’m leaving my phone in the car.”
“Well, have fun, Lieu. My Philly friend and I should be heading toward the boardwalk about then.”
“Take him out to dinner if you want. I’ll voucher it.”
“You sure?” He was thinking about the incinerator debacle.
“I’m sure,” she said.
“You know this guy in the sketch is pretty twisted-looking. Anyone who had seen a face like that wouldn’t forget it.”
“That’s about what I thought.”
“Maybe it’s not even a real person?”
“You’re not telling me anything I haven’t already thought of.” She sighed. “Thanks for working with him, by the way. I’ll make it up to you.”
“No problem, Lieu. He’s a good guy. We’re heading over to Jennie Woo’s next, then Carlino’s boyfriend. Tonight we’ll look for the gang around Strayer’s.”
“Don’t forget Newsy.”
“I’ll try him on the way to Jennie’s.”
McGuire heard a noise in the outer office again. “Sorry, Lieu. Got to go, someone’s in the outer office.”
McGuire picked up a stack of mail and opened the door into the outer office, almost running into Dillon’s boots around the corner. The fat man was draped over one of the detective’s chairs with his feet propped up on a desk. There was mustard on his T-shirt and he reeked of booze.
“You need something?” McGuire asked.
“Yeah, I need a blow job,” Dillon slurred, grabbing his crotch. “But I see the lieutenant ain’t here right now.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Maybe that was her on the phone just now? Calling in from the nail salon?”
Dillon pushed himself back from the desk and stumbled to his feet, knocking over a ceramic coffee mug that read “Best Dad”; it shattered on the floor. “You know why you suits make me so sick?” He staggered in place. “Because you all think you’re smarter than the rest of us, giggling on the phone like a bunch of little girls; none of you have the nuts to know what real cop work is all about. Sorry-ass detectives,” he mumbled, weaving toward the door.
McGuire closed his eyes and said a silent prayer. A prayer that Dillon hadn’t heard him talking about Sherry Moore.
Sherry was wrapped in a towel and sitting on the balcony when O’Shaughnessy arrived. “Enjoying the storm?” she asked.
Sherry nodded. “I can’t remember the last time I slept so well. We left the sliders open all night.”
And indeed it had been her longest night of sleep since the incident at the funeral home.
“It’s getting dark out there. The brunt of it won’t hit until midnight, but the tides are up and the beaches are covered with seaweed.”
“I can smell it,” Sherry said. “Would you like coffee, Kelly?”
“Yes, I’d love coffee, but I’ll pour. What do you take?”
“Black,” the blind woman said.
O’Shaughnessy grabbed the woman’s mug and found herself one in the cabinet.
“This was your mother’s place, you said?”
“Yes,” she answered. She carried the cups to the balcony and took a seat next to Sherry. “She had a thing for white. Everything here is white. White rug, white furniture, white walls, white, white, white.”
“I’m sure it’s beautiful.”
“Actually, it’s not so bad. I used to buy her art every Christmas, just to get a little color in here.” O’Shaughnessy sipped her coffee. “My sergeant said no luck with the sketch.”
Sherry shook her head. “John came back at lunch and told me the same. I’m not always comfortable that I interpret what I’ve seen correctly, Kelly. I’ve had some bad experiences in the past.”
“You can hardly be expected to be perfect at such a thing, I would imagine.”
Sherry hugged herself. “Sometimes you can hardly afford not to be.”
“You’re nervous about tonight. The morgue?”
Sherry nodded.
“And that’s not like you.”
She shook her head.
O’Shaughnessy sensed there was far more to visiting Andrew Markey than the woman could share.
“I’m hoping you’ll want to join me for dinner tonight before we visit the body. I told my sergeant to take Detective Payne out as well. I think they’ll be at it late anyhow.”
Sherry waved her hand. “Please don’t rearrange your life for me. I’m quite content to do nothing, and John brought a bag of sandwiches in case I get hungry.”
“Well, my children are at their father’s, and quite frankly I’d rather not spend the evening alone. All right?”
“Only if I get to pay,” Sherry said.
“Payne didn’t tell me you were so stubborn.”
26
SATURDAY, JUNE 4
WILDWOOD, NEW JERSEY
Marcia was able to free one of her wrists by dislocating her thumb and tucking it under her fingers, a stunt that Nicky made possible the night he threw her out of a second-floor window.
The bus was overrun with rats—not your typical farm rats, but pale, sluggish creatures with yellow eyes. They looked for all their worth like small opossums. She could only tell when it was night or day by the color of the scratches on the painted black windows and when sunlight illuminated the front steps of the bus. Sykes had already given her the tour; she’d seen the pit, which was all you really needed to see to understand what went on in here.
There were no highway sounds, no horns or sirens, but airplanes crossed frequently and she could hear the whopping blades of a helicopter throughout the day. At first she thought they were looking for her, but later she began to recognize a pattern. It was a tourist’s ride, going out over the coast and back.
He’d taken her clothes and dropped them into the pit in front of her. He poured water into her mouth from a plastic Coke bottle and fed her candy bars that he cut in small bites with a dirty paring knife left by the side of the lantern. He told her that if she got too weak to keep him happy he’d throw her into the pit. After that he left her naked but covered with the tarp.
Once she managed to slip off the handcuff, she could roll to the side and tear the tape from her lips and scream if she chose to. She could also reach the lantern on the floor next to her and the little paring knife that was next to it.
The first time she’d done it she could see the lipstick stains on the mattress under her head and the scratches along the rod where someone had fought the cuffs. She was not the first woman to lie here waiting to die.
He’d raped her that first night, but yesterday he had looked sick, flushed like he had the flu, and paid minimal attention to her. Nicky’s sister looked that way when she didn’t get her fix. She thought he might be on medication.
But medication or not, he was planning something. He brought back a policeman’s hat and a pair of glimmering black shoes he kept against one wall of the bus. They were small shoes, lady’s uniform shoes. He told her he was bringing some entertainment for her soon. He told her she would be part of the show.
When he let her use a bucket, he emptied it into the pit; the smell of that hole when he removed the cover was as if he’d opened the throat of hell, a gaseous cavity into the detritus of mankind. The mere thought of being pushed into it alive was more than her mind could bear. How many others had suffered that fate? How many others had he pulled kicking and screaming across the
floor?
She grinned as if demented herself, rolling, reaching, and touching the small knife by the lantern. Slip, roll, reach, grab. She could do it every time. It was strange, she thought, but she had spent a lot of her time alone thinking of Nicky. Nicky who had dominated her life, Nicky who had raped and beat her, and humiliated her in front of his family and friends. It was amazing how clear it all seemed now, like she’d had an out-of-body experience where one part of her was looking down upon the other and there was finally no more uncertainty about what was right and what was wrong. What she was going to accept and what she wasn’t.
She had learned something else in the last two days as well. She wouldn’t lie here and scream like a Schmidt wife would do. She wouldn’t risk the only chance she had. She was ready for him. She could take anything he threw at her; Nicky had prepared her for that.
They would have found Connie’s car by now and Connie would be all over the authorities. She’d have the whole damned state looking for her and she wouldn’t back off until it was done.
Marcia knew she wasn’t all that far from the parkway. She knew she’d been carried into a junkyard. Someone would be along soon, some kind of official person or the owner or an employee, maybe just kids fooling around. And when she saw who it was and she knew it was safe, she’d slip off the handcuff and call out for help. If no help came, she would wait and practice her roll and jab, waiting until the next time he crawled on top of her. If he ever did it again, she was going to give him the screwing of his life.
27
SATURDAY NIGHT, JUNE 4
WILDWOOD, NEW JERSEY
“I love all the smells,” Sherry said, taking in the aroma of Kissock’s kitchen.
They were seated in the dining room, halfway between the back wall and the bar, where, O’Shaughnessy recalled, not too long before she had met Clarke for drinks. She’d been so nervous that night about bumping into someone she knew. Now she was worried she might bump into Tim and another woman.
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