They went for calamari, followed by Caesar salads, then decided to split a chicken marsala—an extra plate naturally; dining from a communal dish was a subset of intimacy and never appropriate for the first date.
Michael could write a book.
The main course came and the waiter poured more red wine. As she ate, Randi glanced from time to time at his plate. She was pacing herself. Given her figure, he guessed she tended to wolf.
Her phone dinged. “Excuse me. It’s my daughter.”
“Oh, please. Go right ahead.”
She read, then sent a message and put her phone down.
They conversed some more and when they were nearly finished with the meal, Michael wiped his mouth with his napkin. “So you have children?
A slight pause. “Just the one. Is that an . . .” She lifted her hand. The missing word was issue.
“Oh, no worries! I love kids. I’m sort of a surrogate father to my nephew—my sister’s son. His father abandoned the family.” A shake of the head. “I never had any of my own. One of my regrets.” A sip of Brunello, the best Tuscan—no, the best Italian—wine ever made. “What’s her name, your daughter?”
“Erin.”
“Pretty. How old?”
“Thirteen.”
“That’s what, high school?”
“Middle. Freshman next year.”
“You look athletic,” Michael said, without—of course—any glance whatsoever south of the neck. “Does she take after you, in sports?”
“Oh, I never played anything. Well, field hockey in high school but not seriously. I’ve always been into exercising. That’s my thing.”
“Spinning, that’s right.” A sip. “Me, I jog. It’s relaxing.”
Randi snuck a bread mop in the marsala sauce. “Erin’s game is softball.”
“I heard that underhand pitches are almost as fast as major-league baseball.”
“I wouldn’t know about that. But she’s good. She plays outfield mostly.”
The conversation meandered once more. The entrée dishes were cleared away. Michael toyed with the dessert menu card that the male server—a very non-Italian immigrant—had brought. Albanian was Michael’s guess.
Another sip of wine.
The night was winding down.
Lucky or not?
Michael asked, “Just curious. How does Erin feel about your dating?”
A brief, processing hesitation. “She’s good with it. I’ve been divorced six years now.” An awkward smile. “She understands it’s time for old Mom to get back on the horse.”
“‘Old’? Hardly.”
Randi dipped her head. Perhaps a blush?
“She was seven. Must have been hard for her.”
“Well, Bob was your definition of an uninvolved husband. And father. He missed most of her activities and games. Work, work, work.”
And sex, sex, sex. Bob had somebody on the side, of course. Somebodies probably. Maybe he came up with a fake name and joined the same app, or ap, that Michael and Randi had used tonight.
“Does Bob see Erin?”
Randi was toying with the dessert card but not looking at it. Though she was of the build that would enjoy some tiramisu or a gelato her appetite for uno dolce seemed to have slipped.
“Every other weekend.” Nothing more.
Michael slowly filled his mouth with wine, enjoying the rich, earthy tastes as they flowed around his tongue and then down to his belly.
Those Italians . . .
Her silence and stiff body language telegraphed what was coming next. A staged smile. “You know, Michael, I’d be a little more comfortable not talking about my ex.”
“Oh, hey. Sure.” He tapped his forehead as if catching himself in a terrible social blunder.
“Thank you.”
He said, “Really, I’m sorry. It’s just I feel comfortable talking to you. It’s not like it’s a first date at all.”
The smile warmed.
“Dessert?” he asked.
“Maybe I’ll just take a peek.” She ran her fingers, tipped in bright-red nails, over the menu card.
He did too. Lots of yummy options. Without looking up, he said, “I think back to when I was Erin’s age. You know what I loved? When my parents went out and they’d drop me off for a sleepover.”
“Those were fun. Sure. Sally, Ruth and Edie. We did that all the time. Pajama parties.”
“For me it was Josh and Tony—my buddies. We’d stay up till midnight. Playing board games, cards. What’re Erin and her BFFs doing tonight?” He grinned. “That’s what my nephew tells me the girls say. Best friends forever.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Erin? What’re she and her friends up to tonight?”
“Um . . . she’s home doing her homework.”
Michael kept his eyes on Randi as he dropped a pause between them. “Oh.” He sipped water, then wine and looked down as he rated the desserts.
He felt Randi’s face aimed his way.
“Anything look good to you?” he asked slowly.
After a moment: “She’s thirteen.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Erin’s thirteen. She’s not a little girl.”
Michael held up his palms and offered a broad smile. “Oh, please. God, I’m not being critical or anything.”
“The way you reacted.”
“Well . . . Okay, I was a little surprised. But I’m different. Don’t go by me.” Back to the menu. The cannoli were probably soggy. You had to fill them just before they were served, not ahead of time. “When my nephew’s with me I don’t leave him. Which I’m sure drives him crazy.” He leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “But I just think about all that inappropriate stuff on TV and the web. You read that article in the Times? It said sixty percent of teens watch online porn. Even girls. Shocking. And those chat rooms and things.”
“She doesn’t do that.”
“Of course not. I’m sure you’ve set up parental controls.”
A blink. She hadn’t.
Randi blurted, “And it’s a school night. She couldn’t go to a sleepover.”
“Homework. That’s right. Good for you. Keep her academics up. I’m sure she’s a great student.”
Randi was looking at the tablecloth as she surveyed the mudslide of the conversation. “I wouldn’t leave her if I thought there was any risk.”
“I know you wouldn’t. Remember at drinks, we were talking about faults? I guess I should have said I’m overprotective.” He shrugged. “I just can’t help myself. When I see someone who seems endangered or neglected these alarm bells go off. I’m trying to—”
“‘Neglected’?” Randi whispered. The dessert card flopped to the table and she was sitting forward. The wrinkles had returned. “What is this all about?”
He put his card down too. His face was troubled. “Well, to be honest, Randi, you didn’t mention you had a child in your profile.”
“No one ever does. There are some sick people out there. You said it didn’t matter.”
“Oh, it doesn’t—not you having children. Not one bit.” Michael had another taste of wine. It was opening up like a flower under a summer sun. He sighed, perhaps the way Erin’s history teacher would, when confronting her about a plagiarized essay. He put his hands, palms down, on the table. “But I have to say I was bothered you left her by herself. I’d always want an adult home with a child. I know, I know . . . thirteen. But that isn’t eighteen now, is it?
“I worry they could fall in the shower or choke. Or there’d be a fire. And, let’s face it, today’s kids? Left alone, what do they eat for dinner? Chips, soda and cookies. And then there’s the liquor cabinet. And those naughty pictures they send to their friends.”
“My God,” she stammered.
“I’m sorry but I have to say it. If I was divorced, I wouldn’t even date until my son or daughter went off to college. You choose to have a child, then your life is not about you. It’s about them.”
She sn
apped, “Who the hell are you to lecture me? I don’t have to defend my parenting to you.”
“If you can call that parenting.”
“What?”
“I pulled back before, trying to be polite but, yes, I do think you’re neglecting her . . . Hey, I don’t know why you’re looking so shocked. In the back of your mind, aren’t you always thinking when you’re out with a man: What’s Erin really up to back there? Is she okay? Did she have somebody over she shouldn’t?” He put some edge in his voice. “And that brings us back to my original question: What does she think about you dating? Well, we both know the answer: She hates it. She pretends not to mind but that’s because she’s afraid of alienating you even more.”
“You can’t talk to me that way!” The shouted words drew the attention of diners nearby.
“Looks like somebody has to. All your daughter knows is that you’re saying that some random men’re more important than she is.”
Face contorted with anger, Randi leaped to her feet. Her chair fell backward. He expected a sharp rejoinder but she didn’t bother. The woman grabbed her jacket and purse from the floor and fled to the door.
As a busboy righted the chair Michael sat back and took another sip of wine.
And struggled to keep the smile of satisfaction off his face.
A perfect date.
Lucky indeed.
He’d been out with women who were as bland and boring as white bread, providing him no ammunition. Moderately attractive, moderately successful, nice, polite. Those nights had been excruciating wastes of time, even if they ended up in bed.
That was Randi to a tee—at least at first. She gave him nothing to work with. But then—thank you, Lord—she turned out to be a mother and one who’d left her daughter home (as undoubtedly a hundred thousand other single parents were doing tonight across the country with no adverse consequences whatsoever).
The server approached uneasily. He put down the check, which otherwise would have irritated Michael because he hadn’t asked for it. Tonight, though, after Randi, he was in a jovial and forgiving mood.
He wagged a finger and the man took the bill back. Michael poured Randi’s wine into his own glass. He frowned and looked up at the server. “Have a question. What would you recommend? The chocolate cake or the tiramisu?”
7
A half hour later Michael was walking back to his apartment, through the chill night.
The veteran was gone, probably back to his “home” at the shelter.
He heard a scraping of sole on concrete behind him and glanced back. A larger shadow swallowed a smaller one. And a car moving slowly, only its parking lights on.
He felt a tremor of concern.
Crosshairs . . .
Waiting, shivering in the cold. But the shadow did not materialize again and the car turned and vanished. He picked up his pace, prodded by the freeze—and his concern.
Once in his small, grungy apartment, he doffed his jacket and made a cup of coffee, poured in sugar.
He sat at the unsteady table and looked at what rested on the stained plaid tablecloth: a set of Russian nesting dolls. He picked one up and gazed at it affectionately.
People thought they were ancient but the truth was they dated to only the late 1800s and could actually be traced to one man: Vasily Zvyozdochkin, a famed woodturner, who resembled a skinny Stalin. The dolls were based on a series of folk paintings by another Russian artist. Their official name was matryoshka, which meant little matron, after the given female name Matryona. Outside of Russia, they were usually called babushka—grandmother—dolls. Or nesting dolls.
The outer doll was traditionally a woman. The ones inside, revealed when you separated them at the waist, could be of either gender. The innermost was always a baby. Usually there were around five to ten dolls inside the outer doll. The record was fifty-one.
Sometimes the craftsman created a series that showcased his talent as a woodturner and artist. Sometimes the artist incorporated a social or political theme. There was a popular series at the moment in which Vladimir Putin was the outer doll and prior Russian and Soviet leaders nestled inside.
Matryoshka dolls traditionally represented the feminine aspects of Russian culture and, of course, fertility, given that they carried another person within them.
Michael had an idea of his own for a doll. The outer one was a woman. The next doll inside was that same person with her skin removed. In the next she would be without muscle. In the next, her organs would have been removed. The innermost would be a tiny skeleton.
If he’d had any artistic skill he would have made one.
Sipping coffee, feeling cozy in his little place.
Thoughts of the nesting doll brought another image to mind: Detective Ernest Neville. Michael pictured him in the bright sun outside the house on Juniper Lane, his breath puffing, as he awkwardly recited his statement.
What exactly are you, your wife and daughter up to on this cold evening? Are you as comfy warm as I am?
Are you enjoying wine and cocoa as a fake log burns in the fireplace, its pinchy chemical aroma wafting into the room? Are you watching Netflix? Are you playing Monopoly?
Your family might be but I know you aren’t, Detective. No, sir. You’ll be working through the night, into the wee hours, in your desperate quest to stop the RDK killings.
Michael wondered if, when Neville’s daughter turned thirteen, he and his wife would leave the girl alone when they went out on the town. He couldn’t answer that. But he knew that the Nevilles wouldn’t do so now. Not under any circumstances.
For one thing, she was only six years old.
But more than that: the poor thing was in a constant state of terror.
Michael Stendhal knew this for a fact.
8
Three Days Earlier
11:00 a.m., Sunday, November 9
I’m worried the princess will die.”
Neville replied, “Not if we get it right.”
“If it falls it could kill her and everyone. The wall’s too wobbly.”
These words gave Ernest Neville pause; they came from the mouth of his young daughter.
Oh, Sheri understood that the casualties she was concerned about wouldn’t technically be deaths at all, as the victims would be LEGO people, presently standing or sitting—it was hard to tell—at the base of the princess’s castle, which father and daughter had been constructing for the past hour and forty minutes.
But obviously the concept of death was on her mind. Why? The cheerful first grader, with silky hair and a smile made only more charming by the missing teeth, knew about Daddy’s job. Maybe she’d overheard him talking to Betsy about a homicide or fatal car crash.
“We can make it safe,” Neville told her. “Look at the instructions. There’s a piece we’re missing.”
She peered at the sizable document. In his day, LEGOs were rectangles that could be assembled to make walls and floors only and that lay in wait for your bare feet when you went to the bathroom at two a.m.
With a tiny finger Sheri traced over the fine print, then poked through the box that, to Neville, seemed to contain five hundred thousand small plastic pieces. Finally she found the stone-colored one meant to brace the base. Maybe it was a flying buttress. Neville seemed to remember something from school about them.
He lifted the castle carefully, praying it didn’t collapse and crush the spectators, and she inserted the piece where it belonged.
She beamed. The princess and her subjects would be safe.
Betsy walked into the doorway, eyeing the edifice. “Well, that’s impressive.”
His wife, a tanned and athletic blonde, forty-one, like him, remained as beautiful as she’d been when they met and married just after college. When not at the school where she taught, she volunteered at a hospice and jogged and biked. She was also a genius in the kitchen. While his body had refused to gain weight, even under the assault of her irresistible creations, of late she’d developed a slight roll
of belly over her jeans. It piqued her somewhat but Neville found it utterly charming . . . and undeniably appealing.
“Leave in twenty?” A Sunday neighborhood barbecue was planned.
Neville looked at the box of LEGO pieces, which had mysteriously doubled in number to an even million. He said, “Sure.”
“Daddy!”
“We’ll finish it tonight.”
Betsy told their daughter, “Harold and Junie are back from their trip. They’ll be there.”
“Yay!” The girl pulled a small carton forward and opened the flaps.
“What’s in there, honey?”
“It’s the princess who’ll live in the castle.”
She tilted the box toward him.
Neville looked inside. “Where did you get that?”
“I found her on the back porch this morning.”
After a moment her father asked, “Hey, sweets, is it okay if I borrow her for a little while?”
A frown. “I guess. If you take good care of her.”
“I will. Don’t worry.”
Neville stepped into the kitchen and returned a moment later. He took the Russian nesting doll from the girl and slipped it into a plastic bag.
Twenty minutes later, holding the bagged doll, Neville strode into the Handleman County Sheriff’s Office.
The facility was in a functional nineteenth-century redbrick building in downtown Marshall, a dead ringer for the courthouse, which was across the square. Both buildings were large. And busy. Handleman was only partly idyllic; it was tethered to a much larger and more urban county, and gangs and other bad actors tended to bleed—so to speak—over the county line.
Neville made his way through the green-linoleum, green-walled, green-lit corridors straight to the Crime Scene Unit’s office.
The middle-aged clerk at the desk, a slim woman, said, “Uh-oh.” She eyed the bag.
“Not another killing. He was at my house.”
A grimace. “Lord, Detective. Is—”
“Everybody’s okay. But Sheri’s freaked out. Daddy took her doll as evidence and I called a team to search the backyard. She figured out somebody’d been to the house who shouldn’t’ve . . . Her face.” He sighed. “I’ll never forget that look as long as I live.”
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