by Tawni O'Dell
“You’re not bringing him in as a suspect already?”
I feel a little protective of Zane. In my gut, I know he didn’t do it.
“I told you I talked to him earlier,” I remind Nolan.
He leans back in his chair and assesses me from behind his shades.
“He came across as a nice, normal kid who seemed genuinely in the dark and then genuinely devastated. I think he loved her.”
“Loving their girlfriends is the number one reason boyfriends kill them,” Nolan replies.
I put together two plates of pasta, top them with fresh basil and pieces of buffalo mozzarella that immediately begin to melt into the sauce, and signal at Nolan to join me outside to eat on the deck.
He grabs the bread and his beer and follows.
“I wish I had some wine to go with this,” I say, sitting down.
“I don’t,” he says.
“How’s the wife?” I ask to piss him off.
The correct response would’ve been, Let me run to the State Store that’s only a five-minute drive away and get you a bottle.
“Visiting the grandkids in Colorado,” he says with his mouth full.
“Isn’t that what she was doing the last time I saw you about a year ago?”
“I think she was visiting the other grandkids in Ohio then.”
“Does she ever visit you?”
“Not anymore. What did you think about her mother?”
I take time to savor some of my dinner knowing the pause won’t derail Nolan. He has one topic of conversation: work.
“Everyone deals with grief differently,” I finally respond.
“Don’t give me that TV-shrink bullshit. We both know there’s only one way a mother deals with losing her child.”
“So maybe Shawna Truly has some issues. It doesn’t mean she had anything to do with her daughter’s death. How were Miranda and Jessy at the morgue?”
“The sister was inconsolable. Miranda Truly is a tough old bird, but she shed some tears, too. Frankly, the mother looked bored.”
“Maybe she’s just completely shut down. She’s got one child in jail, one who got pregnant at eighteen, now one dead at seventeen.”
“Kind of makes you wonder what’s going through the heads of the two that are left.”
“Hey, Chief ?” I hear someone calling out.
Singer comes walking around the side of my house carrying my taupe pump.
“I knocked but nobody answered.”
He stops when he sees Nolan and our dinner on the table.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had company.”
“He’s not company.”
The two men eye each other up and down. Singer’s in a pair of cargo shorts, brown leather loafers, and a yellow-and-gray-checked oxford shirt over a yellow T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Even though Nolan’s still in his suit from work, his missing tie and jacket make him seem obscenely underdressed.
“Good evening, Corporal Greely,” Singer says with a little formal dip of his head.
“Singer,” Nolan grunts.
I’m amazed he remembers his name.
“I brought you your shoe,” Singer announces.
I take it from him. It looks brand-new.
“This is fantastic. Thank you.”
I beam at him; he beams back.
“Would you like to stay for dinner?”
“I don’t want to intrude.”
“You wouldn’t be intruding.”
“You’d be intruding,” Nolan says.
Singer laughs nervously.
“Okay. I’ll see you at work.”
Nolan barely waits for the boy to depart before asking, “What’s wrong with him? Is he gay or does he have the hots for you?”
“Which would bother you more?” I wonder. “There’s nothing wrong with him. Stop being such a backward redneck.”
I know I’ve hit his sore spot. Nolan’s family is only one step up from the Truly family, but it’s an important step.
He stands up from the table and I think I may have crossed the line. He comes toward me, then stops short, leans down, and kisses me.
I throw my arms around him, and he pulls me roughly from my chair. I have a sudden pounding desire to have him crush me into bits too small to even be collected let alone be put back together.
There’s nothing like witnessing the savagery of the human animal firsthand to make our bodies ache for a reminder from our species that we’re also capable of exquisite acts of mercy.
I break free from his embrace only long enough to pull off his glasses. I always make him look me in the eyes when he’s using me for redemption.
chapter seven
IT USED TO BE if I saw a little sneaker on the side of the road, I’d think a kid lost his sneaker. Now I think a mother lost her kid.
I never had any children. Their creation has to be either accidental or intentional, and I was too careful to risk the first and too carefree to attempt the second. Now that I’ve wrapped up my procreating years, I get an occasional twinge of regret, but on days like today, I comfort myself with the knowledge that by not having a child I won’t ever have to face the kind of devastation that would come from losing one.
Shawna Truly still isn’t exhibiting any signs of grief, but, unlike Nolan, I’m not convinced this means she could be involved in her daughter’s death, although I will admit it’s hard to feel sympathy for her. Camio’s murder has hardened her mother’s malaise into a wall of anger impossible to scale, while it’s appeared to have the opposite effect on her sister.
Jessyca has been more open during this visit than she was the first time I met her. She’s taken me upstairs to see Camio’s room, an oasis of self-respect in the Truly home.
The space is neat and clean, not purposely sterile but a little empty. It reminds me of the room I shared with Neely in the Springfield Street house. We slept, changed our clothes, did our homework, and shared our secrets there, but we never bothered to personalize it. This wasn’t a conscious decision; we just sensed we shouldn’t settle in, and even though we lived there for almost ten years, we never lost this transient feeling. Like Neely’s father passing through her conception, we passed through our childhoods hopefully on our way to a better place.
Camio’s room could belong to any teenage girl or to anyone of any age. The only area that shows any real use is her desk, where books, pens, folders, and notebooks are scattered.
A few of the books are about psychology, checked out from the school library, vague, dated, pedantic treatises explaining the field to laymen. Jessy confirmed that Camio wanted to be a psychologist someday. I found it heartbreaking that this smart, ambitious girl had to read useless, dog-eared texts wrapped in crinkly cellophane jackets when there was an endless amount of up-to-date, snappily written information on the subject that was only a purchase click away on Amazon.
She had a laptop that Jessy told me she bought used two years ago with money she earned from an after-school job. Nolan confiscated it and has techs going through it. So far nothing has popped up. She had a few close girlfriends. Nolan has already talked to them and got nothing out of them. He wants me to interview them later today hoping I’ll have better luck because I’m a girl, too.
Jessy’s sitting down and picking at a loose thread in what looks like a homemade patchwork quilt folded at the end of Camio’s bed. Her long butter yellow hair hides her face. She has about two inches of brown regrowth visible at the top of her head, and her fingernail polish is chipped, two of my mom’s biggest pet peeves. She insisted you could tell the quality of a woman by how perfectly painted she kept her nails and how well she concealed her dark roots. Jessy has failed miserably at both.
The baby is on the floor busily gnawing on something that occasionally squeaks. I stoop down to get a closer look. It’s a long flat strip of brown plush with a fox’s head on one end and a tail on the other. She’s chewing on a stuffing-free dog toy. They’re very popular, accor
ding to Neely. A dog can destroy one without scattering the filling all over the house and yard, but the Trulys don’t have a dog.
“What’s your baby’s name?” I ask as I scoop her into my arms and stand up again.
“Goldie.”
“I like it,” I say. “Is there any special meaning behind it?”
“It was partly Cami’s idea. She said I should name her after something precious like diamonds. I thought of a Gold Card.”
I smile at her. “I guess that’s a step up from calling her plain old Visa.”
She doesn’t smile back. I realize attempts at humor aren’t going to go over well with this girl. I try sharing instead.
“My little brother’s named after a puppy my mom had when she was little.”
I don’t tell her that this same puppy was tied up outside because no one would take the time to housebreak or train him and he eventually bit a neighbor boy and was put to sleep.
“That’s kind of cute,” she says dully.
“So Camio was happy for you when you had your baby?” I ask.
“For the most part. She was kind of jealous, too.”
“I thought Camio wanted to go to college and have a career. Why would she be jealous of you having a baby right out of high school?”
“ ’Cause she was crazy about babies. She wanted to have a whole bunch. And now I already got one.”
“What about you? Did you want a baby?”
She breaks the thread on the blanket with a snap and moves on to another one.
“Goldie was an accident.”
“You mean you were using birth control but still got pregnant?”
“I mean I got pregnant ’cause I wasn’t using birth control.”
“Then Goldie’s not an accident. She’s a consequence.”
She gives me a blank look.
“Whatever,” she says.
“I know this is a sensitive question, but did you ever think about not having the baby?”
“Are you kidding? Grandma would’ve skinned me alive.”
“What if she didn’t know?”
“She knows everything. You can’t lie to her. Mom thinks she’s part witch.”
“They don’t get along?”
“Everybody gets along with Grandma, ’cause we have to.”
Goldie drops the dog toy to the floor and reaches for my necklace. She stuffs the beads into her mouth.
“So Camio has her own room?”
“We used to share. Derk and Tug got the one next door.”
“Where do you and Goldie live now?”
Jessy stops picking at the quilt and falls back on the bed. She reaches her hands over her head and begins to move her arms up and down like she’s making a snow angel.
“The basement,” she replies, closing her eyes rapturously. “I sleep on a couch.”
I wonder if acquiring a bigger bed can be a motive for murder? Who knows with this family?
Goldie gets tired of my necklace and realizes she’s lost her fox strip. She starts whimpering, and Jessy lunges for the toy. She hands it to her baby before she can begin to wail.
“She loves this thing. Can’t live without it,” Jessy explains.
I feel it would be tacky to tell her it’s a dog toy. To my surprise, she tells me.
“It’s a dog toy,” she says. “Derk picked it out for her. Tug took him to get her a gift and he hated all of the baby stuff. He got her a rabbit, too. It’s around here somewhere.”
“I heard Camio didn’t go to her junior prom even though Zane wanted to go.” I try to get her back on the topic of her dead sister.
“She would’ve had to take so much abuse about it. Just easier not to go.”
“What abuse?”
“My folks hate Zane.”
“Why?”
“Don’t know. They hate most people.”
“Did you go to your prom?”
“I dropped out already.”
“You didn’t finish high school?”
“Cami was helping me get my GED.”
The words are barely out of her mouth before she bursts into tears and plops back down on the bed.
Goldie turns her little curly blond head in her mother’s direction at the sound and begins crying, too.
I shift the baby to a hip and sit next to Jessy. I put my arm around her shoulders and try to comfort her, but she’s stiff and unreceptive. She holds her arms straight out in front of her, and I notice the chipped nail polish on the tips of her fingers is the same color as what was on Camio’s toes.
“I was mean to her,” she sobs.
“Sisters say mean things to each other sometimes,” I assure her while clutching her tighter to me and bouncing her bawling infant. “I’m sure she knew you loved her.”
A movement outside the window grabs my attention. We’re on the second floor and my first assumption is a large bird must have flown by, but then a head pops up over the sill. I think it might be a bear cub or a chimp before remembering the first can’t climb a house and the second doesn’t live on this continent. A pair of aware dark eyes, like tiny reverse flashlights that absorb instead of illuminate, meet my own for a split second before they disappear along with the head. Derk.
I do my best to calm down Jessy and her baby. The two of them are still crying when I leave but not as hysterically. Jessy holds Goldie to her chest and rocks her from side to side while she clutches her fox.
I make my way back downstairs. A bunch of extended family has descended on the Truly house today. They mill around, smoking and trying to converse over the blare of the TV, many of them clutching beers even though it’s only 10:00 a.m.
Tug is absent. He went to work. Jessy explained that he was too upset to stay in the house and her parents didn’t care if he left.
Shawna, draped in sleeveless regal purple polyester, sits on the couch where I talked to her two days ago. She seems to have grown bigger, both figuratively and literally. Her bulk takes up half the couch but her presence takes up the entire room. She’s become even more detached and this somehow makes her even more insurmountable, the immensity of her expected agony matched only by the terrible size of what she doesn’t seem to feel.
She refused to speak to me when I arrived earlier and she wasn’t the only one. No one would talk to me about Camio. I felt like I couldn’t be more unwelcome here if I was the murderer.
Nolan interviewed all the key family members yesterday except for Miranda, who considered it sacrilege to discuss her granddaughter’s murder on the Lord’s day. He also talked to Zane and his parents, Camio’s coworkers at Dairy Queen, and a few friends, and so far hasn’t been able to determine where Camio was between the hours of 5:00 p.m. and 8:42, when she sent Zane the text.
We know she got home from her job around five and handed over the car to Jessy, who left with Goldie to go to a friend’s house. The only other working vehicle on the premises was their father’s pickup, and neither of the girls were allowed to drive it. When Neely dropped off Tug after work around six, he says Camio was already gone again. Even though her mother never left the couch during this entire time period, she claims to have no idea when her daughter came and went or if she heard a car outside picking her up. Her father was on the road, and her grandmother was at her own home two miles away.
Camio’s purse was found in her room, but her phone was not and is still missing. Her girlfriends exchanged a couple of messages with her while she was at work, but they all confirmed, along with Zane, that Camio wasn’t a big texter, rarely posted on her Facebook page, and didn’t participate in any other kind of social media. Unlike most kids her age, she could electronically disappear for days at a time except to stay in touch with Zane by phone. It wasn’t strange not to hear from her.
“You find anything in her room?” Clark asks me when I join him and the rest of his extended family again.
I’ve encountered hard drinkers who have been jolted sober by tragedy; Clark Truly isn’t going to be one of them. Hi
s eyes are bloodshot, his language slurred. His hands, holding a red Solo cup and a cigarette, tremble uncontrollably. This man makes his livelihood driving very large trucks; I don’t feel good about this.
“I wasn’t looking for anything,” I tell him. “I was just trying to get a sense of who she was. You must have been proud of her.”
“Why’s that?”
“She was a hard worker. Got good grades. She was heading for college.”
“Why would we be proud of that?”
The words are a challenge daring me to suggest that an education is a positive thing thereby implying that everyone in this room is a failure; this is certainly not what I would be implying, but these are people with skins as thin and brittle as an onion’s outermost layer.
“Oh, I don’t know. A lot of people would be proud of that. Apparently, you’re not one of them. What makes you proud? Teen pregnancy? DUIs? Bar stabbings?”
Twenty pairs of close-set predatory eyes, eager for a confrontation they can blow out of proportion and add to their endless catalog of unforgivable slights, land their hot gazes on me. Weak chins, thin lips, puffy cheeks, blotchy complexions: they all suffer from the same special kind of malnutrition that doesn’t come from not getting enough calories but from getting the wrong kind.
Before Clark or anyone else can respond, a familiar knife-edged voice rings out.
“You’ll have to forgive Chief Carnahan for her disrespect,” Miranda says. “She never had anyone to teach her any manners.”
I turn and find the small, bony woman, already dressed in funereal black, standing behind me with the proprietary air of a crow perched on roadkill.
“Her mother was the biggest whore this town’s ever seen and her own daddy wouldn’t claim her. I knew his mother, Betty McMahon. Good, God-fearing Christian woman.”
She looks directly at me.
“She used to refer to you as slut spit.”
Everyone watches me, waiting to see how I’m going to react. Will I get angry, or flustered, or burst into tears and beat a hasty retreat? Clark leans so far forward, I’m afraid his bloated belly on top of his two spindly legs might pull him forward and topple him to the mushy floor where his impact would undoubtedly make a loud squish.