by Alex Barclay
‘Ms Vescovi, if I sent through a photo of a woman, could you take a look at it and see if you recognize her from any other photos in your mother’s collection?’
‘Absolutely,’ said Carolina. She gave Janine her email address.
Janine emailed the photo of Viggi Leinster. She could hear the ping of Carolina’s inbox, the click of her mouse. And, eventually, a gasp.
‘Oh my gosh,’ said Carolina.
Ren and Janine exchanged glances.
‘That woman,’ said Carolina. ‘Her eyes. She’s the same woman at the edge of the photo with Walter Prince. She was beautiful. She … she … who is she?’
‘Her name was Viggi Leinster,’ said Janine. ‘She’s been on the Missing Persons list since 1957. The last confirmed sighting of her was at your parents’ restaurant.’
‘Wow – I’ve never heard anything about that,’ said Carolina. ‘But, then, I was only a child …’
‘There are no witness statements from your parents in the police report,’ said Janine. ‘We believe they had to have been in the restaurant that night. There was a party for the premiere of Nights of Cabiria. It was a big event.’
It sounded like Carolina Vescovi was crying.
Janine and Ren stared at each other.
‘Ms Vescovi?’ said Janine.
They could hear her struggle to control her breathing.
‘Is everything OK?’ said Janine.
‘I … I … I’m going to have to call you back …’
‘Please,’ said Janine, ‘if there’s anything …’
‘I … will call back … I promise.’
The line went dead.
Ren and Janine put down the phones.
‘What are we supposed to do with that information?’ said Ren.
‘I have no idea,’ said Janine.
‘So, Walter Prince and Viggi Leinster knew each other,’ said Ren.
‘Walter Prince was one of the last people to see a missing woman alive,’ said Janine.
‘And there’s no record of him in any of the police reports …’ said Ren.
‘What has gotten her so upset?’ said Janine. ‘What’s the rest of her story?’
‘We’ll leave her to compose herself,’ said Ren. ‘I’m sure she wouldn’t hang up for no reason.’
Kohler was standing there as they looked up.
‘Sadly, you can’t hang around to find out,’ said Kohler. ‘Jesse Coombes awaits.’
51
Kristen Faule had arranged for Kohler and Ren to meet with Jesse Coombes in the art therapy room at the ranch. Ren turned to Kohler as they arrived at the door. ‘OK, out of the two of us, I would venture that I look the most harmless … and this kid’s father is a raving misogynist—’
‘Can you believe he’s letting the kid do this alone?’ said Kohler.
‘I absolutely can,’ said Ren. ‘And here’s why … something’s going on with Howard Coombes. Some shit is about to hit the fan and he is avoiding the law and he’s avoiding facing his son. He has fucked up in some way. I know it.’
‘These people don’t deserve to have kids,’ said Kohler.
‘Nope,’ said Ren. ‘So, back to the misogyny. If Jesse Coombes is anything like his daddy, he may look at women as the weaker sex … You do the routine stuff and I’ll come in with the hard questions …’
‘Are you trying to avoid saying good cop/bad cop?’ said Kohler.
‘It cheapens us.’
The art therapy room was filled with light, in contrast to the emo presence sitting at the desk by the wall in front of rows of student paintings. The images were almost entirely rich with color. Ren pictured a buoyant teacher with an over-stretched smile, running around, taking all the black ink away, pausing at the red ink, tempted to do the same, but deciding – no! – it could also be used for lips or beach balls or prom dresses or hearts or roses! Not just blood!
Jesse Coombes was leaning forward, his fingertips pressed together, his hands making a circle in front of him that he kept opening and closing. As he looked up, Ren could see he still had traces of the youthful looks she had seen in his videos, but hadn’t recognized in him the first time they met.
‘Hello, Jesse,’ said Kohler. ‘I’m Detective Kohler, and this is Special Agent Ren Bryce, she’s an FBI agent with Safe Streets in Denver.’
‘Sir,’ he said, nodding to Kohler, shaking his hand.
‘Hello again,’ said Ren. ‘We met before …’
‘Hello, ma’am,’ said Jesse, standing up. He reached and clasped Ren’s hand as he shook it. ‘Of course I remember you. I’m sorry I lied that day.’
‘As long as we agree on the truth from now on,’ said Ren.
Jesse nodded.
‘We’d like you to talk us through the morning of Monday, May 14th, please,’ said Kohler.
‘Well, I’ll try,’ said Jesse, ‘but it seems like a long time ago. I know it isn’t, but it just feels that way.’ He paused. ‘Breakfast is the same time every morning in the main lodge – eight a.m. I usually get up between seven and seven thirty, take a shower, head over then.’
‘And is that what you did that morning?’ said Kohler.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Jesse.
‘What time was breakfast over at?’ said Kohler.
‘Eight forty-five,’ said Jesse.
‘Where did you go afterward?’ said Kohler.
‘Classes begin at nine,’ said Jesse. ‘I went to class—’
‘We can get a copy of your timetable for that morning,’ said Kohler. ‘Your attendance records.’
Jesse swallowed. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘That’s OK …’
Hmm. ‘If they’ve been in any way tampered with,’ said Ren, ‘there will be consequences. This goes beyond the ranch, Jesse. And it’s a homicide investigation …’
He stared down at the ground. ‘I know, ma’am. But I don’t know anything about the homicide. I swear on the Bible, I do not.’
Ren and Kohler glanced at each other.
‘You believe in the truth, don’t you?’ said Ren. ‘In being honest.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Jesse. He looked up at her.
‘Please, Jesse, for your own sake, for everyone’s, tell us what happened that morning,’ said Ren.
As she waited, her gaze traveled along the wall of artwork, some of which looked like it was painted by ten-year-olds … probably the last time these kids felt safe or loved or happy or cared for. There was one image of a back garden; green grass, a barbecue, a picket fence and birthday balloons – red! When Ren looked closer, the fence posts were graves with names on them. Lots of names. And the birthday balloons were created by the brush being flicked over the page. Spatter. And the barbecue tools were guns and knives and they were covered with birthday-balloon red.
Jesse Coombes’ birthday barbecue …
Kohler said nothing to break the silence.
‘Tell me about the car,’ said Ren, turning to Jesse. Tell me about the beautiful flames.
Jesse’s gaze jerked toward her. ‘What about it?’ He paused. ‘The car that was burnt out?’
‘Yes,’ said Ren. Patience.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I just heard about it after …’
Ren leaned down to her satchel and took out the brown paper evidence bag. She set it in front of him. She slid out the journal. ‘We found this, Jesse …’
He blushed.
I do not want to humiliate you.
‘How?’ he managed to say.
‘A man called Morgan Greene had it,’ said Ren. ‘Do you know him?’
Jesse shook his head. ‘Not really.’ He paused. ‘He told me he’d get rid of it.’
‘He didn’t,’ said Ren. ‘He kept it to use against you. He lied to you. What we need to know is your side of the story. All we have so far is this, and his promise to tell us the rest. He wants a lighter sentence.’
Jesse started to cry.
‘When I was your age,’ said Ren, ‘I had a journal. I used to w
rite down every single thought I had. It wasn’t a very happy time for me. I found that journal a few years back, and I read it. It was horrible. So little of it reflected who I am, or even how I saw those years looking back. Do you know what I did, Jesse? I burned it. I threw it in the fire in my mom’s house when she wasn’t looking and I was very happy to see it go up in flames. And the idea that anyone else would have read it, back then or even now … well, I couldn’t bear it. Detective Kohler and I are not here to judge you or to judge what you’ve written. We’re just here to get to the bottom of things. We are working on a very important investigation here and we need your help. We need your truthful answers. We have no interest in embarrassing you.’
Jesse nodded. ‘Thank you …’
‘So …’ said Ren. ‘Take your time.’
‘I … I got some bad news the night before …’
Ren waited.
‘News about my father …’ said Jesse. He snorted. ‘And I heard it from his publicist. Even though my father, apparently, had just flown into Centennial Airport. I found that out the next morning. Anyway, the publicist that I’ve never even spoken to before told me that a story could possibly break about my father, that it was not for definite that it would, but that if it did, I had to be “prepared” … which meant prepared to lie about it, as opposed to being emotionally prepared. Nice.’
‘What was that news?’ said Ren.
‘My father has gotten his secretary pregnant,’ said Jesse. ‘Newsflash: my father is an asshole.’
52
Ren looked at Jesse Coombes and the destruction wrought by the boy’s own father, a man who chose to dictate to the world how they should live, while living an entirely different way himself.
I will never understand the mind of people like that. Live, let live. Or shut the fuck up.
‘When you heard about your father, how did it make you feel?’ said Ren.
Jesse smiled. ‘Now you sound like a counselor.’
‘OK,’ said Ren. ‘How about you tell me how you reacted …’
‘Well …’ said Jesse. ‘I couldn’t sleep, thinking about it all … and at about five a.m., I’d had enough. I went outside, I walked and walked and I ended up in the grounds of the abbey. I didn’t even know I had crossed over. But I was there and then I was past the chapel and then, then I came across this cemetery. It was all overgrown, all these people’s memorials just covered in weeds and stuff, and I just thought of people’s legacies being destroyed and it was all just so depressing. I thought of my time on earth, my father’s, everyone’s. I pulled away a few weeds to read the headstones and I see a little baby grave and it just … it just broke my heart. I thought of myself, how shitty my father is, how hard he’s made things for me, all my life, and I felt ungrateful. I felt spiteful and unforgiving and unloving. I felt like I was judging, when I am not the one to judge. Only Our Lord shall judge. I looked at that little baby’s name carved into that stone and I thought, she didn’t stand a chance, she did not stand a chance in this world. Baby Ward. I cleared away the rest of the weeds and I kept on clearing and I kept on clearing. By then, it was breakfast time and I … I had to go. But when I was at breakfast, I realized that I had left this pile of scrub just there in the cemetery, and I thought about the wildfire that just happened and I thought about how hot it was and how stupid I’d been and then I decided that I couldn’t leave everything there, but that if I set some kind of controlled fire in the cemetery, it would look like a hate crime or something. So I got one of Kendall’s cars and picked up all the weeds and scrub and stuff, put them in the trunk, and drove it back to the fire pit. I threw all the weeds in there and lit it on fire, you know, so it could burn safely … As I was watching the flames, I started thinking about my father and his new baby and how he lies all the time, and I had horrible thoughts and I felt horrible that any part of me was like my father and … the journal … the journal was part of that. So I went to my room, I got it, and I came back. My plan was to throw it in there. That’s when Morgan Greene showed up.’
‘Did you know him?’ said Ren.
‘I knew him to say hello to, from him working at the ranch.’
‘What did he say to you?’ said Ren.
‘He grabbed the journal from me, wanted to look at it,’ said Jesse. ‘We struggled, it dropped, I kicked it into the fire pit, but it didn’t land in the flames. He reached down and grabbed it out, started looking at it.’
‘That can’t have been easy,’ said Ren.
‘No, ma’am,’ said Jesse.
‘What happened next?’ said Ren.
‘Well, he said that if I wanted it back, we could come to some arrangement.’
‘And you really wanted it back,’ said Ren.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Jesse. ‘He said he would take care of the accelerant, set the car I’d used on fire. He’d do all that stuff. All I had to do was keep my mouth shut. He wouldn’t say I did it, I wouldn’t say he did it, but enough doubt would be cast that no one could really be sure. He was lying, though. Once he knew that the car was burnt out, he went straight to the Faules and told them he had seen me hanging around the fire pit. My clothes stank. It was obvious.’
‘How did the Faules react?’ said Ren.
‘They were angry at first,’ said Jesse. ‘But then they were very understanding when they heard about the situation with my father. I had to take the hit. I couldn’t tell them that Morgan Greene had forced me into it, because he still had the journal. Kristen scheduled extra therapy for me, and she and Kenneth agreed to pay for Mr Kendall’s car.’ He paused. ‘What happened with Conor’s aunt later that day … that was something no one expected. I’m sure the Faules didn’t want to have to lie to you – they’re good Christian people – but I think they’d already gone so far.’
‘How the Faules responded to all this was their choice, Jesse, and it’s not something for you to worry about,’ said Ren.
‘But I—’ said Jesse.
‘You made a bad judgment call,’ said Ren, ‘because of an emotional situation you found yourself in.’
‘I should have known better,’ said Jesse. ‘I’d been getting help.’
‘It takes time,’ said Ren. ‘You have to be patient.’
But you don’t get off that lightly.
Ren shifted her seat a little forward. ‘Jesse, could you tell me a little more about your feelings for Conor Gorman?’
Jesse reddened. He shook his head. ‘Please don’t … please don’t ask me that. It’s embarrassing.’
‘I’m afraid these are the questions I need answers to,’ said Ren.
‘I tried to burn the journal for a reason,’ said Jesse.
‘And what was that reason?’ said Ren.
‘I’m not that person any more,’ said Jesse. ‘It’s like what you said about your journal.’
Ren nodded. ‘What person is that?’
‘I don’t really know. Intense?’
Ren waited.
‘Maybe I care about people a little too much,’ said Jesse. ‘I have a lot of love. I have all the Lord’s love inside me, because I need to have enough to give to each and every person who does not believe that they have it, that they were born with it, that the Lord placed it right there for them, the same way as He placed their eyes and ears and their ten fingers and their ten toes. It’s just you can’t see it.’
Alrighty, then … You can only suppress the crazy for so long.
‘So I have to show them that it’s there,’ said Jesse. ‘But people often aren’t open to that. They’re afraid. So you have to hide it until a time comes when you can release it. Only then can I stand before them and let them know about that love and have them walk away with that love in their hearts. Can you imagine what storing all that love feels like? Maybe … I don’t know … but maybe when I wasn’t standing up in front of crowds any more, maybe when I wasn’t sending all of that love out there, there was too much of it left inside me. And when only one or two people are getting al
l that love that I have to give … hundreds-and-thousands-of-people worth of love … maybe they won’t ever understand.’
Or maybe some day, someone will.
‘Did you ever consider that Conor’s aunt wanted to take him away from the ranch?’ said Ren.
‘No,’ said Jesse.
‘Did he say anything like that?’ said Ren.
‘No,’ said Jesse.
‘What does “Rubyman” mean, Jesse?’ said Ren.
‘It’s one of my father’s terms,’ said Jesse. ‘I am to invoke The Rubyman when faced with danger. He is my inner strength, The Rubyman. Rubies ward off evil, restrain lustful thoughts—’
‘Who were you having lustful thoughts about?’ said Ren.
Again, Jesse reddened.
‘OK, let’s save that question,’ said Ren. ‘Let’s get back to The Rubyman … so he’s not the devil?’
Jesse looked horrified. ‘No, no, no. The opposite. And The Rubyman is what’s inside me – it’s not someone else. It’s not an external power.’
‘Can you explain how The Rubyman related to Dominic Fisher?’ said Ren.
Jesse’s eyes went wide. ‘How did you know about that?’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ said Ren. ‘But, please explain that to me.’
‘He was guiding me into dark ways,’ said Jesse. ‘He got me stealing, hotwiring cars. He … I was taking the wrong path.’
‘And the photos of Dominic Fisher that you had on that secret cell phone?’ said Ren.
‘I … I didn’t want to send that girl photos of my body,’ said Jesse. ‘The girl in Austin. I … I … wasn’t as buff as Dominic. I didn’t work out. I’m so ashamed. So, I took photos of him, he had no clue, and I sent her those instead, like, with his head chopped out of them. I told her it was because of who I was … that I couldn’t get caught with ones that had my face in them.’
‘It was my understanding that you took those photos of Dominic Fisher for yourself,’ said Ren.
‘No, oh my gosh, no,’ said Jesse. ‘They were for her. Who told you that?’
Someone very eager to misinterpret the actions of an evangelist.