“Murph drove Franz and their other son, Joey, to meet Jane at Wilson Hospital. She’s an emergency room nurse. Night shift. Too upset to drive her car.”
“Can’t blame her.”
“They’re going to a hotel.”
“Better to have them out of our hair,” Tom said.
“What little I’ve got,” Jackson joked as the chrome light fixture hanging from the ceiling shone on his bald head.
Tom glanced around at the empty walls and coffee table’s top. The lampshades were covered with plastic wrap, like they’d just that minute arrived from Home Depot. The only sign that someone actually lived in this room was a bowling trophy on a side table. A small brass man swung his arm behind him, about to whomp his ball into nonexistent pins. Below was etched “Franz Vanderwaal, 2013.”
“So what’s Franz like?” Tom asked.
“A shrimp. Napoléon complex. Reactive.When I told him Christopher had died from a cop’s gunshot wounds, the first words out of his mouth were, ‘I’ll sue the hell out of you.’ ”
“No concern for Christopher?”
“If there was, it whizzed right by me,” Jackson said. “Franz never wondered why he hadn’t shown up for dinner tonight. Father of the Year.”
Tom tucked that fact away for future thought. “What about Joey?”
“He’s thirteen. He stood here, didn’t say a word. Didn’t dare cry.”
“Could be some father-son problem going on.”
“That’s my take. Intimidation or neglect.” Jackson picked up the bowling trophy, frowned at it, and set it down. “Damned shame.”
The palm Tom ran over the gas fireplace mantel got dusty. “Franz say anything else? Any thoughts about Christopher?”
“Claimed nothing unusual was going on with him. No mental health issues or recent problems at school. Everything perfect. Gold stars all around.”
“Maybe Jane’ll be more open.” Tom hoped. Uncooperative parents could be doors slammed in your face.
He followed Jackson through the kitchen and noted the sink of dirty dishes that Jane might be displeased to find. She also might not like the newspapers piled on the breakfast table next to greasy plates and jars of mayo, mustard, and peanut butter, onto which no one had bothered to screw back the lids. Attached to the refrigerator by magnetized frogs were to-do lists so long that the Energizer Bunny would lose heart. Tom didn’t much like the feeling here. Something seemed out of whack. Nobody seemed to care about the house.
Jackson led Tom down a dark hall to Christopher’s bedroom, which was a tidy day to the kitchen’s grubby night.
“Whoa! No normal kid is this neat.” Tom looked around at books set in even rows on shelves, and shoes lined up, straight as soldiers in parade formation, under the bed. “This is weird. A monk could have lived in this room.”
“He’s emptied the wastebasket. I have to threaten my kid with no TV for a month to get him to do that,” Jackson said.
Tom poked the wrinkle-free plaid bedspread. “You could bounce quarters off this. There’s got to be something out of place here.”
Jackson nodded toward a poster of a young David Bowie. “That’s the only hint of rebellion.” In a sports coat and loosened tie, he had slicked back his hair, and a cigarette dangled from his lips. His famed different-sized pupils drilled straight into Tom. Printed in red letters above Bowie’s pretty head was the name of his hit “Under Pressure.”
Tom tried to imagine what David Bowie’s gaze had meant to Christopher and how it might have drawn him in. “You think Christopher was gay?”
“Could have been. Ask his parents,” Jackson said.
“Maybe they didn’t know.”
“He might have been trying to work it out. That could upset a kid.”
“Sure could,” Tom said. “Something was bugging him if he stabbed a K-9 and attacked Brady.” That is if Brady told it like it really was. It’s too early in the game to know what’s what.
Tom and Jackson started a search of Christopher’s room to answer key questions:What was he like? Who were his friends? Did he take drugs? Leaning toward the theory that drugs could have been involved in Christopher’s alleged attack, Tom wanted to search out a hypothetical stash or anything else of interest.
He rifled through pockets of Christopher’s shirts, Dockers, and jeans. His clothes were conservative and Spartan. His only nod to most teens’ slouchy outfits was a fleece vest and jacket collection.
Jackson checked the toes of Christopher’s shoes, unrolled balls of his socks, and reached under drawer linings. Tom ripped off his bedspread and sheets and looked for mattress slits that might lead to secret compartments. Together, they unscrewed and prodded behind heater vents, light switches, and plugs. While Jackson peeled David Bowie from the wall to see if Christopher had flattened drugs in an envelope and taped them behind the poster, Tom went to the bathroom and opened Christopher’s deodorant stick and shampoo bottle. “Squeaky clean choirboy,” he muttered.
Next, Tom and Jackson pulled Christopher’s many books from three wide shelves and hunted for hidden pockets carved out of pages. Tom noted titles—The Hunger Games, The Way of the Shadows, Catching Fire, Frankenstein, and Slaughterhouse-Five. He flipped through Christopher’s field guides to everything from worms to stars. Clearly, he’d liked to read, and widely. Nature meant something to him. Maybe he’d been a Boy Scout.
When Jackson found Christopher’s San Julian High School yearbook, Tom thought they might have struck gold. But the yearbook index listed only two photos of Christopher. “Not exactly Mr. Popular,” Jackson said.
In his class picture, Christopher was wearing a neatly pressed button-down white shirt, a cousin of those in his closet. He had sandy brown hair, cut short and as tidy as his room. His eyes looked sad and older than his sixteen years, as if he might have seen and felt too much too early.
“Could have been lots of mileage on that kid,” Jackson said.
“But he’s clean cut. You’d never believe a kid like that could do what Brady claims.” Tom flipped to the yearbook’s second photo, in which Christopher looked lost in the back row of the Computer Club. “Maybe he was a nerd.”
Jackson bent down for a closer look. “Interesting about the club when there’s no computer in this room.”
“Could Franz have sneaked it out of here?”
“He never got out of my sight,” Jackson said.
“What about Joey?”
“Nobody had the chance to take anything.”
Tom walked over to Christopher’s IKEA birch desk. On top sat a computer printer; its cable, coiled on the wood, was connected to nothing. Tom shuffled through the drawers and found the usual school supplies—printer paper, pens, pencils, a stapler, some paper clips. Nothing revealing. No iPods or video games tucked anywhere.
Tom wondered if Christopher had purposely cleaned out everything, including a cell phone that would tell investigators who he was. Tom made a mental note. High Priority: Locate the electronics.
CHAPTER 10
ANDREA
“They moved my geraniums off the windowsills.” Andie looked around her living room for other signs of Tom Wolski’s invasion.
“His team checked that Christopher hadn’t opened a window,” Stephanie said.
“They should have put my plants back.”
“Not to worry. Easily fixed.”
Stephanie moved the pots from the coffee table to the sills as Andie walked around the house to see if valuables were missing. Her grandmother’s silver pitcher still sat in the kitchen cabinet. Her TV, CD player, and computer were safely in her bedroom. No one had taken her collection of silver teaspoons, started on a family trip to Canada when she was five, or the Native American jewelry she’d inherited from her mother but rarely wore. Andie’s checkbooks were still tucked into one of her rolltop desk’s drawers.
All but the geraniums looked the same as yesterday, but something wasn’t right. It was a vague feeling in the air. Andie sensed that Tom’s te
am had left behind ragged traces of their energy as they’d snooped around and pawed her windows and heaven only knew what else. Her house didn’t feel like hers anymore. Like the north side of her yard, it reminded her of Christopher, and it didn’t feel safe. But, then, after last night, no place did.
Andie found Stephanie in the kitchen and winced at Justice’s water bowl on her linoleum floor. “Nothing’s missing except my beloved dog,” she said. When they’d seen him this morning, he’d been awake and she’d been hopeful—until he’d tried to get up and hadn’t had the strength.
Andie was still wearing the same nasty sweat suit dredged from her station locker. Not wanting to send Stephanie back here last night for toiletries, she’d brushed her teeth with her index finger and Stephanie’s Colgate. She’d forgotten to wash her face in the shower. Her hair, usually puffy as a red cloud, was flattened against her head, and her spirit had flattened too. She knew how a punctured tire felt. You don’t see your dog stabbed, then kill someone without major emotional damage.
But for Stephanie’s sake, Andie tried to act normal. “Tea?” she asked.
“If you’ve got time.”
“I don’t have anything but time.”
As Stephanie set spoons and place mats on Andie’s round oak kitchen table, she chattered about the vacation she’d been saving for—to the Great Barrier Reef. “I’ve found a great way to raise more money. On weekends I’m going to be an artist’s model. I can earn up to forty-five dollars an hour, and all I have to do is hold a pose for a few minutes.”
Andie narrowed her eyes. “What kind of pose?”
“I don’t know. No contortions, as far as I’ve read. It sounds easy. I could listen to music.”
“You haven’t mentioned if you’d be naked.”
“Oh, that.” Stephanie got Andie’s sugar bowl from a kitchen cabinet. “Don’t rain on my parade.”
“What if the Green River Killer gets you in his private studio? You’d be totally vulnerable.” He could come at you with a knife.
“You’re talking like a cop.”
“I am a cop.” At least for now. A whistle from Andie’s kettle pierced the air.
Without asking what kind of tea Stephanie wanted—the answer was always English breakfast—Andie set two tea bags into white mugs and poured in boiling water. “By the way, I know what you’re doing.”
“I’m trying to earn money for my trip.”
“I mean right now. You want to make me think about something besides last night. You’re trying to keep me from being upset.”
“It was working pretty well.”
It wasn’t, though Andie didn’t want to point that out. Stephanie was trying so hard to help. Even if her effort hadn’t worked, Andie loved her for it. “You’ve been wonderful, Steph. I can’t thank you enough, but now I have to take care of myself.”
* * *
After Stephanie left, Andie poured herself another mug of tea and brought her wooden recipe box to the kitchen table. She thought she might make cookies and take them, as usual, to the station—till it occurred to her that she could only go there on official business now. Still, sifting and stirring always made her feel better, so she thumbed through her recipes and pulled out the index card for Al Capone Biscotti. If she were banished from the station, she’d make them for the senior center.
Andie read the card, but she couldn’t seem to get the ingredients straight. She saw “flour,” then moved down to “sugar,” but had forgotten both of them by the time she got to “eggs.” The ingredients she’d mixed together countless times now seemed incomprehensible.
As she stared across the kitchen, the afternoon sun shone through a crystal prism hanging in her window and cast a blurry rainbow on the wall. Her house’s silence seemed to echo, and she longed for Justice more than ever. Andie closed her eyes. A big mistake. The movie she’d watched till dawn on Stephanie’s living-room ceiling started up again on the backs of her lids.
The movie was The Stab and the Shot, starring Christopher Vanderwaal and Andrea Brady. It opened with Justice’s shrieks, then showed Christopher’s knife blade shining in a flashlight’s beam and his hood casting shadows on his face. The soundtrack boomed Andie’s words, “Decide! Decide!” In the last scene, Christopher’s pool of blood seeped into her driveway’s dirt.
Unnerved, Andie opened her eyes. Across the kitchen, Christopher leaned against her refrigerator door, one foot crossed over the other, his eyes boring into her. She turned toward the window, but he was out there peering in, his hands cupped around his eyes against the sun’s glare on the glass. Andie pressed her fingertips against her temples. Her stomach tightened to a fist. She couldn’t get away from him.
How could you not have seen Christopher on your own property sooner? she asked herself. Why didn’t you pick up from Justice immediately that Christopher was there? Why didn’t you have Justice under control so he’d have come when you called? . . . She pummeled herself with “shoulds”: She should have been more vigilant. She should have yelled at Christopher more forcefully. She should have gotten off her lazy bum and changed the lightbulb so she’d have seen him when she first drove up.
Andie could list dozens of things that she should have done differently so Justice wouldn’t have gotten hurt and Christopher would have lived. But she’d done none of those things, and she was to blame for all that had happened. It was her fault that Christopher was dead.
Since last night, shock and fear had ruled Andie. But now the guilt she’d staved off came at her with a cyclone’s force. It blew down her power lines, stripped her trees, shattered her windows, and blasted through her front door, leaving her defenseless and exposed. She was as vulnerable as Stephanie posing naked for a maniac, but Andie’s nakedness was emotional and inescapable. No one could hide from something so internal as guilt.
She buried her face in her hands, and tears pooled in her palms.
* * *
When Andie stopped crying, her brain felt stuffed with soggy paper towels. The kitchen was dark, and moonlight was shining on the table. She got up, turned on the lights, and poured herself a glass of water from the tap. I can’t go on like this. I can’t spend the rest of my life unhinged. I have to get hold of myself.
The problem was that she had no idea how. She’d never been in a situation that even vaguely resembled what she was facing. None of her colleagues had ever killed anyone; she had nowhere to turn for advice.
As Andie sank back into her chair, she wished her father were still alive. In scrapes even as a small child, she’d gone to him for guidance; he’d never failed her. What would he do if he’d just killed Christopher? she wondered. The answer that dawned on her was that he’d do what he’d always done: He’d be a tough, brave cop.
As far as she knew, he’d never used deadly force on anyone. But if someone had attacked him, she had no doubt that he’d have used any means necessary to protect himself—and, afterward, he’d have been honorable and strong. In an investigation, he’d have called on iron discipline. He’d never have let himself fall apart. He’d have kept his feelings in check, and, with unwavering courage, he’d have taken whatever was thrown at him.
Which was exactly what Andie decided to do.
She told herself that as a cop she had to survive not just physically but also mentally. She had to keep from getting killed, and she had to keep from losing her mind. That required staying controlled, holding in her emotions, and keeping her own counsel. Whatever she felt, no one could know.
She would not just keep the wall that most police constructed between their feelings and the outside world; she would rebuild the wall with granite boulders and fortify it with her steel. She would make the wall so thick that nothing could break it down or find a way through cracks to reach her heart. Air hammers could not rat-a-tat a tunnel; earthmovers could not scrape the wall aside. It would get her through what lay ahead.
* * *
As usual before going to bed, Andie got a pen and index card, and a
t the kitchen table she began her list of the three things she was grateful for.
1. Christopher’s knife didn’t go into Justice’s lung, and he’s better today than yesterday.
2. I’m alive behind my granite wall.
As Andie was thinking what the third thing might be, a thud on the kitchen windowsill made her jump inside her skin. This time Rosemary, not an imaginary Christopher, was looking through the glass at her. Unaware that Justice was gone, Rosemary announced that she would grace him with her presence for a game of Bat the Ping-Pong Ball Around the Living Room. The moonlight on her tabby stripes changed her from an alley cat to a feline princess.
Andie opened the window, scooped up Rosemary, and hugged her. “You dear kitty! Justice isn’t here, but thank you so much for stopping by.” With Rosemary, Andie didn’t have to be a tough cop; she could be her guilty, needy self.
For once, Rosemary didn’t wriggle out of her arms and leap to the floor with a resounding thump. She purred, nuzzled Andie’s neck, and willingly bestowed fur therapy. When Andie told her that she’d die if Justice never came home, Rosemary acted like she understood.
Andie carried her to the table.With the kitty in her lap, she finished the list:
3. Rosemary comforted me just when I needed it.
Andie tossed the card into her wicker gratitude basket and thought, Even in the blackest times, there’s something to be thankful for.
CHAPTER 11
TOM
The Vanderwaals’ living room was as cheerless this morning as it had been last night. It felt damp and smelled vaguely of mold. Tom had thought that sunshine would brighten up the house, but little light filtered through the trees. As to be expected after a child’s death, misery hung in the air, clung to the walls, and fogged the windows.
Jane and Franz occupied opposite ends of a living-room sofa, separated from each other by more than four feet. She was thin and pale, and her mouse-brown hair was twisted and pinned above her neck. She looked as if an eraser had come down from the sky and rubbed life off her face. The rims of her eyes were red from crying. Her nervous hands twisted a white handkerchief.
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