Angels Burning

by Tawni O'Dell

  Miranda’s eyes shift quickly from him to me. I raise my pen, poised to take notes.

  “Yes. I mean, no,” she stutters. “I misplaced a few things. Then I found them again. I’m an old lady. How do you know this?”

  “You’re lying,” I state flatly. “You didn’t misplace anything. You might be old, but you’re sharp as a tack.”

  “Don’t speak to Mrs. Truly like that,” Nolan commands.

  “Don’t you speak to me like that,” I snap back at him. “You were my superior eons ago. Not anymore. I know how to conduct an interrogation.”

  He leans back in his chair, puts his hands behind his head, and stretches out his legs.

  “Fine. Go ahead. Conduct away.”

  “Mrs. Truly,” I begin again. “Has something of substantial value gone missing from your home recently?”

  She glances at Nolan. He’s staring at the ceiling.

  “I don’t own anything of substantial value,” she answers me in a prickly tone.

  “I don’t mean expensive. I mean something important. Like your dead granddaughter’s phone.”

  I got her good. Panic dances in her eyes for a split second followed by the fight-or-flight reflex. Flight is impossible for her at the moment. She decides to fight. I’d expect no less from her.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Camio’s phone was found in your house. We have it in our possession now and we have the testimony of the person who took it from you.”

  The seed has been planted. We know who invaded her home and messed around with her stuff and her sanity. This is a piece of information she’d love to have.

  “You have the testimony of a thief then,” she responds angrily. “What good will that do you?”

  “He’s only a thief if he took it. So you’re saying someone did take the phone from your home?”

  My backward looping logic has her temporarily confused.

  Nolan jumps in.

  “We just need to know how you came to acquire the phone,” he says conversationally.

  “Your fingerprints are on it,” he lies.

  “Camio wanted to show me how it worked. That’s why my fingerprints are on it,” she lies, too.

  We’ve got her on the hook. She’s admitted she handled the phone.

  “These are the freshest prints on the phone. They’re on top of Camio’s,” Nolan continues feeding her a forensic fairy tale. “They belong to whoever touched it last. After she was dead.”

  “Yeah, but . . . ,” I interrupt him, “whoever had the phone used it to frame Camio’s boyfriend, Zane. They sent texts to him pretending to be her to lure him out so he wouldn’t have an alibi during her time of death. That’s pretty smart. I don’t think Miranda here could’ve come up with that.”

  Nolan frowns at me.

  “There’s no reason to be insulting to Mrs. Truly.”

  He turns to her. She’s having a hard time digesting everything and deciphering how much we know and how much we can use against her.

  “Do you watch a lot of TV?” he asks her. “Crime dramas?”

  Before she can answer, I continue with my musings.

  “But you did hate Zane. So maybe it was you. That’s a lot of hate to want to send someone to prison for something he didn’t do. Or did it have nothing to do with your feelings toward Zane? Was he just a convenient scapegoat the police would buy into? You needed someone else to be found guilty so they’d stop looking for the real killer who you’re protecting because . . .” My voice breaks off.

  Nolan gives me a questioning look.

  “Because you still love that person even knowing what they did.”

  “I don’t have one of those phones,” she tries. “I don’t know how to work them.”

  “You just said Camio showed you how,” Nolan corrects her.

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “It’s not rocket science,” I join in. “You know how many dumb people have smartphones?”

  Nolan smiles at that.

  “It might not take intelligence, Mrs. Truly, but it does take patience to write a text if you’re not familiar with the device, and the person who sent the texts took a long time to write each one,” he explains. “He or she wasn’t very experienced at using one.”

  “Who gave you the phone?” she asks him suddenly.

  She’s lasted as long as possible. The inner workings of her family and maintaining control over the living, breathing cogs in the machine she created are of much more importance to her than trying to outmaneuver some questions from a couple of cops. She wants to know who had the audacity to wrong her and violate her home so she can begin to plan apt punishment.

  “We don’t have to share that information with you,” Nolan informs her.

  “But we might,” I add, “if you tell us what happened to Camio.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why did you have her phone?” Nolan presses her.

  “The person who slipped into your home unnoticed and took your personal possessions did so with malicious intent and we believe will continue to harass you,” I tell her.

  Her internal struggle has to be intense at this point, but none of it shows on her exterior. I’m sure she’d give almost anything to find out who was in her house, short of her own freedom and that of her son’s.

  Nolan leans across the table.

  “Mrs. Truly, we’ve arrested your son Edward for the murder of your granddaughter. We’ve found the site where she was killed and the vehicle that was used to transport her body. We think he may have also harmed your sister, Adelaide.”

  Her face grows pale and a small tic begins at the corner of her mouth. She refuses to meet Nolan’s gaze and stares over his shoulder.

  “If you have anything to tell us, you better do it now,” he adds. “You’re up to your eyeballs in this.”

  “You really think I’m capable of killing my own granddaughter?” she asks, her voice trembling slightly. “Or that Eddie would be capable?”

  “Shawna told us a few things you did to her awhile back,” I answer her. “I think you’re capable of just about anything.”

  She clasps her hands in front of her on the table, forming a fleshy ball of gnarled fingers and knobby knuckles.

  “It’s time for me to get a lawyer,” she says. “I’ve watched enough TV to know that.”

  Nolan stands and nods at me. I gather up my folders and notepad. We didn’t get exactly what we wanted, but we got enough for now.

  “That stuff with Shawna,” Miranda says.

  We both pause at the door and look back at her.

  “We only did it to get her to stay. It was for her own good. She needed us.”

  We step out and Nolan closes the door behind him. We look at each other and don’t have to say a word. Sometimes during an interview you stumble into another person’s view of the world around them and all you want to do is get the hell out.

  Another detective joins us. He greets me and hands Nolan a report. Nolan pulls him off to one side for a private conversation. When he turns back to me, he only meets my eyes for a second, then stares off in the direction of the war room. My heart begins pounding at an unhealthy rate.

  “We found your brother’s car. Looks like he never left the state.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “I said his car. There’s no sign of him.”

  “Where?”

  “Fayette County. Parking area near a boat launch on the Monongahela. Any reason for him to be there?”

  “Not that I know of.

  “What are you thinking?” I ask him, doing my best to sound calm and failing.

  “I’m thinking there’s no point in thinking anything,” he replies roughly, doing his best to be kind, and failing.

  “I’m thinking you should go get Jessyca Truly,” he tries again. “Concentrate on the job. You got some control over that.”

  AFTER LEAVING THE BARRACKS I drive without giving much thought at all t
o where I’m going and end up at the cemetery where my dad is buried.

  When I was a kid I used to come here on Father’s Day, but once I became an adult, I started coming here on the anniversary of his death instead. The main reason was because lots of other people visited their fathers’ graves on Father’s Day and I felt like I was cheating. They came armed with true grief and bittersweet memories. I came with nothing except the knowledge that I never knew the man I mourned. All I really knew for sure about him was he briefly owned a cool car and his sperm was motile.

  I haven’t violated this schedule in thirty years and because of this, I’m never here in summer when the grass is green, the birds are singing, the trees are full of whispering leaves, and loved ones have left colorful bouquets of flowers on the graves.

  I’m always bundled up in a coat and gloves. It’s usually sleeting. The tombstones stand stark and untended with a moaning wind whipping through the bare, black branches reaching over them.

  The cemetery sits on church grounds, but it’s far enough away that people worshipping the Lord don’t have to look at the place where their bodies are going to end up while their souls are at the pearly gates reminding him of all the time they spent in those uncomfortable pews.

  My mother is buried in the biggest and most prestigious cemetery in town, the place where many of our wealthiest and most important citizens have been interred along with members of the middle class striving even in death to impress others with what they can afford. Statues of angels, engraved marble columns, massive headstones taller than the men lying beneath them, and the occasional mausoleum dot that landscape along with a smattering of small, unadorned, rock slabs belonging to humble folk who were laid to rest a hundred years ago before anyone knew this would be prime hereafter real estate.

  Neely’s the one who talked Gil into providing our mother with a marker worthy of her beauty. She did it to make Grandma happy. The negotiations took place during a succession of long-distance phone calls. Gil had already fled to Europe and wouldn’t return for Mom’s funeral, although he did return for Lucky’s trial. Her headstone is made of pink marble shot through with veins of ivory and silver, and her name is carved within a heart. I saw it the day of her funeral. I’ve never been back.

  Donny’s headstone is a simple one. Donald Allan McMahon. Beloved Son. His date of birth and death twenty years apart.

  I’m much older than he lived to be. He’s young enough to be my son. I’m much older than my mother now, too. A strange time-traveler feeling comes over me when I look at photos of them. How am I supposed to think of that boy and that young woman as my parents? I don’t. I can’t. It’s easier to believe I came from no one. The thought is freeing in some ways but also fraught with obligation. Since I owe allegiance to no one, I often feel like I should serve everyone.

  I take off my shoes the same way I did out at the Run as I approached Camio’s body, and I walk across the soft grass.

  I arrive at Donny’s grave. Old Hot Wheels cars are heaped up against his stone like a salvage yard of tiny auto parts, many of them no longer sporting their original flashy paint jobs and stickers that were weathered away long ago. Some have disappeared over the years. I don’t know if kids have taken them or one of Donny’s family members has removed them.

  I used to like to think his mother saw them when she visited his grave and somehow knew the cars came from her unclaimed bastard granddaughter and she left them there with her blessing, wondering if maybe I wasn’t that bad after all.

  Grief stabs me all over but I realize I’m not mourning my father, but my brother. Was I drawn to a cemetery because I’m already envisioning putting him in the ground?

  I see Champ as a boy in a dark suit with a single rose clasped in his hands waiting to place it on our mother’s casket. I see Mason the same way with orange socks peeking out from between his pant legs and shoes, holding his binder, waiting to put a coupon or a novelty toothpick on Champ’s casket.

  I shake both images from my head.

  I look down at my father’s grave and wonder what I’m doing here. He can’t provide me with solace, strength, or guidance. He can’t inspire me with the memory of the love we once shared, since we never did. All I have is the assurance of Grandma that he used to pay me clandestine visits when Mom was out and hold me in his arms and tell me I was the sweetest thing in the world.

  I will never be able to forgive my mother. I’ve made my peace with this fact. But I have forgiven my father for turning his back on me and driving his new Sunbird into a tree. He was a child, a reckless boy with an unyielding, overbearing mother, and if she were anything like Miranda, I couldn’t blame him for his prejudices and fears.

  “It’s okay,” I tell him. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  I’ve never said these words out loud before. I realize as I do that my forgiveness is the only thing my dad has ever needed from me. Maybe giving it to him will help ease the loss of everything I needed from him but could never have.

  I get back in my car and drive to the Truly house.

  chapter twenty-six

  DERK ANSWERS THE DOOR taking me by surprise. I didn’t expect to see him corralled.

  His face and hands are covered in red goo and for a panicked second, I think there might be another Truly to add to the body count.

  He looks up at me, says nothing, and scampers into the living room, yelling, “It’s the chief.”

  It’s hot sauce.

  Shawna’s housekeeping hasn’t improved since I’ve been here last, but she seems a little more aware. She’s enthroned in her usual spot on the couch, but she’s not alone. Derk is sitting beside her. They’re eating wings and nachos and watching a Disney movie instead of the blathering talk shows and mindless reality TV she seems to prefer. Her hair looks washed and she’s wearing a pair of earrings.

  “Hello, Shawna,” I greet her. “I hope you don’t mind the intrusion.”

  “What’s going on now? Do you need Derk again?”

  She reaches for a roll of paper towels. The coffee table is a dirty snowdrift of used ones streaked with hot sauce.

  She gives one to Derk and takes one for herself.

  “Derk did a great job. We don’t need him again. You should be proud of him.”

  “So he wasn’t lying? Miranda admitted she had Camio’s phone?”

  “We’re still sorting some things out, but Miranda and Eddie were involved.”

  She pauses while wiping her mouth.

  “I can’t believe it,” she says, shaking her head, her words muffled inside the paper towel.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” Derk tells her, and pats her shoulder.

  “Can we get her back now?” she asks, her eyes shining with tears. “Can we finally bury her?”

  “Are we going to put her in the ground?” Derk asks, visibly upset. “Are we going to bury her like a bone?”

  Shawna reaches for him and pulls him close. I almost expect the skinny little boy to disappear into the folds of her ample flesh, a reverse birth of sort, the mother reabsorbing her child and starting all over.

  “I told you, Derk. It’s not really her,” Shawna assures him. “She’s in heaven. It’s just what’s left over.”

  “Is Jessy here?”

  “She’s upstairs somewhere.”

  “I need to talk to her.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  I’m only supposed to escort Jessy back to Nolan. I’m not supposed to risk damaging an official interrogation by discussing the case and revealing any of the evidence we have against her, but Nolan knows I won’t be able to see the girl again without having a chat with her. This is why he sent me to pick her up. Figuring out how much information he wants me to gather for him to use against her and how much of our hand I can show her in order to get it without obstructing our ultimate goal is the hard part. As usual, I’m going to wing it.

  A chill runs through me when I find Jessy has already moved into her dead sister’s room.

  She’s sitt
ing at Camio’s desk texting. The once neat, almost barren surface is strewn with makeup, jewelry, gum wrappers, and girlie knickknacks. The walls are covered with posters of actors and bands. The bed has a black comforter with fiery red swirls like comets streaking across it.

  Country rock music blares from a speaker shaped like a softball sitting on the dresser, and a nauseating combination of smells ranging from apple cinnamon and sugar cookie to pine forest and tropical coconut waft from dozens of lit candles placed on windowsills and even the floor.

  A crib is pushed against one wall. Goldie is sitting on the floor not far from an electrical outlet and a bag of potato chips. She’s sucking on the lid of a deodorant.

  I don’t say anything to Jessy as I walk over to the baby and take the deodorant out of her hands. She starts to cry and I hoist her onto my hip.

  Jessy glances over at me, her face displaying no emotion as if the chief of police breezing into her room and scooping up her baby is an everyday occurrence.

  “Hi, Jessy,” I say.

  “Hey.”

  “Can we talk for a minute?”

  Goldie grabs on to my lapels, then raises one tiny sticky fist to my lips, leaving behind a smear of orange grease on my jacket. I didn’t notice she’d been eating the chips and they were barbecue.

  I lick at her fingers and she laughs.

  Jessy turns back to her phone and I use the opportunity to take a good look at her to see if anything major has changed since the last time I saw her.

  She’s in cutoffs and a cropped low-cut halter. I’m sure she thinks the amount of cleavage she’s exposing is enticing, but the top also reveals rolls of the extra poundage Kirk the bartender found unappealing but appealing enough.

  Her hair is still in desperate need of a touch-up, and her nails are even more chipped. It takes everything I have not to go forage in a bathroom for polish remover and cotton balls and force a manicure intervention.

  Camio was prettier, thinner, smarter, had a good-looking boyfriend and a bright future in front of her. Could the motive have been something as common and biblical as simple jealousy?