Body of Lies

by Deirdre Savoy

  They could always hope. “I want to take Alex back to the city. She’s had a rough time of it here. Any word on where Williams might be?”

  “No one’s seen him, and we’ve already put it out on the news that he’s wanted. If anyone’s putting him up we don’t know about it.” Smitty stood. “I’ll tell Craig you’re going. I don’t know what he has in mind for the rest of us, but I can’t see him objecting.”

  “Thanks.” He clapped Smitty’s shoulder. “Take care.”

  “Always do.” Smitty opened the door and headed out.

  Almost immediately Alex emerged from the bathroom. He’d wondered what she was doing in there. He knew the minute he saw her. She’d been putting on makeup. Usually her touch was light, subtle, but today she’d used a heavier hand. She probably figured she needed to camouflage her tears last night.

  Zach sighed. In some ways he wished he could go back and undo what she’d told him. He was glad to know, but if it was going to cause this chasm to open between them, he’d rather do without the knowledge. Besides, he knew it was his reaction that bothered her. He couldn’t help that. But he knew he had to get himself together because he was hurting her now without intending to.

  Smitty had also brought them a small satchel in which to store their things. She put the rest of hers in and zipped it.

  “Ready to go?” he asked.

  “Sure.” She slipped on her shoes and headed for the door.

  He wished he knew what to say to her at that moment, but he couldn’t seem to formulate a coherent sentence in his head. Maybe they just needed to get back to the familiar. Maybe, but he wasn’t holding out much hope of that at all.

  Twenty-four

  The first thing Alex did when she got back to New York was to turn on the TV, eager for some New York news—or anything that would take her mind off her stay north and how what happened there would change things. Neither of them had said much during the long trip back. Once they’d walked in the door, she’d headed for the living room while Zach had gone upstairs. Even though they’d only barely gotten together, it seemed like more separated them than a single flight of stairs.

  She turned to the station that catered to Bronx events. One story about an accidental shooting was winding up to be replaced by an update of the Amazon Killer case. She reached for the remote to change the station. She’d had enough in-your-face updates to satisfy her. It was the picture that flashed on the screen above the anchorman’s head that stopped her. Alex had seen that picture before, taken the day she’d gotten her master’s degree in social work. She remembered looking at Williams’s painting and having an image of Roberta flash in her mind. She’d pushed the idea away, not even allowing it to grow to a full thought. Alex wasn’t a superstitious woman, but any comparison between the woman in the painting and her friend seemed like borrowing trouble.

  “... had apparently been hiding out with this woman, Roberta Rosetti, a social worker who in an odd twist worked with Dr. Alex Waters.”

  It made sense then—how Williams seemed to know what they were going to do before they did it. Roberta had been telling him everything she knew. Comparing notes, she called it. How could Roberta not have seen Thorpe in the man she was falling in love with? The simple answer was, he hadn’t wanted her to. He’d gained weight, dyed his blond hair black, and adopted a pair of glasses. Besides, anyone looking for Thorpe was expecting to find some down-on-his-luck drifter, not a man with the means to impersonate a lawyer. Then there was that love thing that was known to cloud the judgment if not the vision as well. Roberta had paid for that blindness with her life.

  Tears gathered in Alex’s eyes and spilled down her cheeks. Her stomach seized and bile rose in her throat. While she’d been watching the report, she’d been numb, analytical. But with nothing cerebral to focus on, Alex’s emotions took over, startling her with their depth. She wanted to scream and smash something, anything. But her rage was impotent as the one man she wanted to destroy was beyond her reach. She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, bowed her head, and wept harder.

  Although she’d never acknowledged it before, Roberta had been her best friend, her only friend, in the lonely life she’d created. She was alone again now. A wave of desolation swept through her, as pitiable as it was, to her mind, selfish. But she couldn’t shake the feeling, not the sorrow, not the anger, not the feeling of isolation that claimed her—none of it.

  After hanging up with Smitty, Zach loped down the stairs in search of Alex. Things between them had been strained since last night and he needed to make them right with her. He needed to explain why he’d reacted the way he did, something she obviously didn’t understand and therefore held against him.

  Unfortunately, he had one more task to accomplish before he could do that. He hoped she’d understand, since most of the heavy hitters in the investigation were still up at Williams’s place, and not hold that against him, too.

  Hearing a noise, he stopped his descent. He’d learned that sound in the past twenty-four hours. Alex was crying. He hurried down the rest of the stairs. She sat on the love seat facing the TV. She seemed to be curled in on herself, bowed, her shoulders hunched and shaking. Even last night, her grief hadn’t been that profound.

  He walked to the opening of the living room. “Alex?”

  She didn’t look up at him, but her hand swiped across her face in a poor attempt to dry her tears.

  She wanted to hide her tears from him? Was he the cause of them this time, or had something else inspired them? He crossed to the love seat and pulled her into his arms. Or tried to. She fought him, hitting him in the chest with her fists. He didn’t release her, since, if she’d really wanted to hurt him she could have. She seemed more frustrated than angry.

  He pulled her closer, trapping her hands between their two bodies. “Baby, what’s the matter?”

  For the first time she looked at him and he saw such desolation in her eyes that it frightened him. “Why didn’t you tell me Roberta was the woman Williams killed?”

  He tensed. He’d had no idea. When Smitty told him they’d made identification, he hadn’t bothered to ask who they’d identified. At the time it hadn’t seemed very important. “I’m so sorry, baby,” he whispered against her ear. “How did you find out?”

  She relaxed against him a little. “It was on the news.” Zach ground his teeth together. He knew as of his hanging up with Smitty that no one on the NYPD had given any information on the girl in Garnerville to the press. He thought he knew who might have—the much incompetent Sheriff Bates. He was probably trying to find some way to look better in the eyes of his constituents. He wondered if Roberta’s brother had learned of his sister’s death in the same way. Damn.

  At least Alex wasn’t crying anymore, except for the faint occasional sniffle. He had to be thankful for that, but he also worried about her. Williams had obviously used Roberta to stay close to Alex and killed her when she wasn’t useful anymore. That had to weigh on Alex. He stroked his hand over her hair. “Tell me what you’re feeling, sweetheart,” he urged.

  Instead she pushed back from him. She swiped at her eyes again. “What did you come downstairs to tell me?”

  He sighed. Maybe it had been foolish on his part to expect her to confide in him, especially after last night. Still, her dismissal of his concern stung. “It can wait.”

  A look of steel came in her eyes. “No. I don’t want you to put off anything on my account. If you have to go, go.”

  He thought he understood how she felt a little. He’d hurt someone she loved. She wanted him caught now more than ever. “They found Williams’s grandmother.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Believe it or not she lives about ten blocks from here. Her lease is under another name.” Which meant that Williams could have found her at any time if he’d known where to look. “I don’t know how long I’ll be. The officers in the car are still outside. I can have a policewoman come in if you like.”

  She
shook her head. “I don’t want to be in here with some stranger. I’ll be fine. I need to call Eric.”

  Zach surveyed her face. If it weren’t for the smudged makeup he never would have known she’d been crying since she appeared completely dry-eyed now. He didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad one that she never seemed to dwell on her own emotions for long. She was already thinking about Roberta’s brother.

  He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and leaned in close enough to ensure that she looked at him. “I’m going to catch this son of a bitch, Alex. I promise you that.”

  She didn’t say anything to that, but the look in her eyes said You’d better.

  Vernita Williams was a small, squat woman purportedly in her sixties but she hadn’t aged well. Her face was a road map of creases. Her hair had gone completely white and had the texture of wet Brillo. She was dressed in a floral-printed smock over a white nightgown, neither of which looked terribly clean. The first thing she said when she opened the door to Zach and the other detective he’d brought along with him, Kraft, was, “Which one of those bitches ratted me out?” She gestured toward a group of women gathered together a couple of houses down, obviously gossiping about her.

  Zach ignored her vitriol. “Can we speak to you a few minutes about your grandsons?”

  She crossed her arms, shrugging her shoulders, but she obviously didn’t intend to let them in. “So someone finally figured out what that daughter of mine done. I saw Homer’s picture all over the news, but I knew he never done nothing. It was that other one. It was her own fault. Nothing good comes from putting a boy in a dress.”

  “Tell me about your daughter,” Zach said.

  “Ain’t much to tell. Nessy was crazy. Everybody knew that. She was pretty and young and all the boys were hot after her.”

  “Nessy?”

  “Va-nes-sa. I named her after Vanessa Redgrave. That woman had class. But my daughter—from the time she was born she was nothing but Messy Nessy. That’s what I used to call her. She’d lie down in the grass back by where we lived and spread her legs for anything with the right thing between them.”

  “Is that how the boys were conceived?”

  “Who the hell knows how them boys came into being? When she got tired of doing it for free, she’d go down by where the highway is now. There wasn’t nothing there but a dirt road and some trees. She made the men start paying for it.” Vernita shrugged. “At least then she helped put some food on the table.”

  “What about the boys?”

  Vernita shook her head gravely. “Nessy had followed some man upstate by the time the boys were born. But he left her, just like I told her he would. No man wants to raise another man’s brats. When it came time for her to deliver, she called me. She was alone and I guess I was better than nothing.

  “Virgil was always the stronger of the two. Even in the womb it seemed like he wanted to suck the life out of Homer. Virgil came out big and strong, but Homer had the cord wrapped around his neck. The doctors saved him, but he wasn’t quite right. Nessy had no use for him, and ignored him, which was probably to his benefit.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, they say the favored child gets all the benefits, but what if that parent is nuts and sees in you a kindred spirit? That’s got to warp a child, too. She used to sew them mother and daughter outfits and take them into town, though she never let those boys go to school. Every time someone seemed to wise up to her she’d move, always to some little hick town, always on the outskirts where no one could see what she was doing. Like I said, Nessy was crazy.”

  Zach studied the old woman. If Nessy was crazy, he wondered what part the old woman had played in that madness. Harmless was not a word he’d used to describe this woman, especially considering the glee with which she recounted her family’s misdeeds. She enjoyed knowing they were out there committing mayhem, relishing it vicariously. He’d had enough of her.

  “Where would Virgil go? Is there anyone he would turn to?”

  “I haven’t seen that boy in years and I could go to my grave happy never to see him again. Why do you think I’m here in this rat hole? I hope he never does find me. You make sure he stays away.”

  For the first time, he saw fear in her eyes. Did she expect Virgil would come seeking retribution? More than likely. Zach knew he’d get the captain to watch this place. But he took his own glee in telling her, “I’ll see what I can do.”

  After trying him at his home and office numbers, Alex found Eric Rosetti at the number for his sister’s apartment. When he picked up, she said, “Eric, this is Alex Waters. I’m so sorry about Roberta.”

  For a long moment there was no response, then the sound of a clearing throat. “Thank you. I’m glad you called.” He gave a short, bitter laugh. “You won’t believe what I was sitting here doing.”

  Eric struck her as the kind of man who, once he decided he liked you, held nothing back. So his familiarity with her didn’t surprise her. “What?”

  “I can’t make any arrangements until I know when the police are going to release her body, but I was trying to figure out what dress to bury her in.”

  She recognized that act as the desperate attempt of the grief-stricken to find something productive to do. It was away of trying to trick themselves into believing they were actually moving on in the grieving process, when actually they were standing still. She couldn’t imagine Eric’s true emotions being anything but raw. But if that’s what he needed to do to cope, she would oblige him.

  “Try the cranberry pantsuit with the matching scarf.”

  “Yes. That will work, I guess. I’m no fashion consultant.” There was another long pause. “It’s not your fault, you know.”

  She knew that. She hadn’t put the rope in Williams’s hand, but he’d gone after Roberta because of the link between them. That was close enough for Alex. “She wouldn’t have been in his path if it weren’t for me.”

  “Maybe not, but you have to understand something about my sister. From the time she was little she brought home a string of wounded birds, homeless dogs, even a three-legged cat. She was the same way with people. Give her the kid everybody picked on or some child whose parents were getting a divorce and that was her best friend. She’d patch them up, too, like she did her animals. We had to draw the line at letting the neighborhood drunk live in our garage.”

  Eric snorted, a sound full of pride and remembrance. “I always knew she’d go into some form of public advocacy work. How else could she champion her underdogs? Unfortunately, she was the same way with men, too—always of the fixer-upper variety, even though she never saw it at first. If she seemed cynical sometimes it was because so many of them disappointed her when their true natures were revealed. Her relationship with you might have put her in this guy’s path, but what made him attractive to her had to do with something innate in her character.”

  He sounded so philosophical, so detached that it worried her, until he added, “God, I miss her so much already.”

  She heard the tears in his voice and felt in herself an answering emptiness. Tears brewed in her eyes, but this time she fought them back. She listened for as long as Eric wanted to talk, sometimes offering advice or encouragement, sometimes just the um-hmm of verbal agreement. Like with most who grieved, the most important thing was to allow those who suffered a loss the opportunity to talk about the one they’d lost.

  After a while, he became quiet. “Thanks for letting me bend your ear like that. Roberta was a very private person. The day you two came here, I don’t think she intended to let you know I was her brother except I spoiled the whole thing by calling her ‘sis.’ But I know she wouldn’t have minded me unloading on you. She spoke of you very highly.”

  So Eric had known about her while she’d known nothing about him. Hearing Eric talk she’d realized how little she’d known about her friend. It occurred to her that Alex could say the same thing about herself. Was there anyone on the planet who really knew her? Roberta
had come the closest.

  To Eric, she said, “I’m glad I could be there for you.”

  They talked for a few minutes more before hanging up, but as Alex disconnected the call she wondered if she weren’t like Roberta in another way as well. Had she picked the significant men in her life because they needed fixing too? Devon’s detachment had appealed to her. She knew he could never break her heart since he could never claim it either.

  But what of Zach—a self-professed cynic, a man who allowed his family to think the worst of him, for what reason she couldn’t fathom? Even as a young girl she’d recognized the loneliness in him. Did she want to fix him, too? And if she did, had she lost the opportunity by not confiding the truth to him before now?

  Alex was already in bed by the time he got home. One thing had led to another and another until it was nearly nine o’clock when he walked in the door. He’d called her to check on her a couple of times. Each time she’d answered, tried to assure him that she was fine, but he didn’t believe that. Still, it was early for her to be in bed already. He’d witnessed Joanna’s depression after her husband’s death. Remembering that made him worry more for Alex. Psychologist or no, everyone had their breaking point. Had Roberta’s death pushed Alex to hers?

  The one thing that heartened him was that she hadn’t withdrawn from him into another room. She was there in his own bed waiting for him. Without turning on the light, he slipped out of his clothes and left them in the chair by the door. He slid into bed beside her and pulled her to him. She was warm and soft, but she wasn’t asleep.

  She laid her cheek against his chest while her fingers stroked his shoulder. “I left some dinner for you in the microwave.”