Maybe not.
Their Jane Doe was unquestionably Meredith Berens. “She matched the general description,” Banner said, “but I wasn’t at all sure until they got her cleaned up. Even then … well, I wanted you to have a look before we contacted her mother.”
I knew what she was getting at. When I first glanced at the cold, gray body under the harsh milk-white lights, I was annoyed at Banner. Why did she have me come all the way down here to look at a woman who obviously was not Meredith Berens, who obviously couldn’t be Meredith? But then I took out the graduation picture and began to look at details, at specific features, and then the broad outlines, the contours, and then at how the former and the latter conspired to form the whole person, and then I came to realize, with a sinking heart, that behind the broken nose and the dislocated jaw and beneath the scratches and bruises in the sunken, lifeless face, that this was Meredith Berens. Had been Meredith Berens.
I said, “Who did this to her?”
“That’s high up on my list of questions, too,” Banner said with some emotion. She gave the attendant a secret sign and he draped the body. I turned away.
Banner said, “Let’s get some air,” but there wasn’t any to be had; just the same cold, oppressive drizzle, trapping the fumes of downtown traffic. The sky was muslin: hazy, foggy in the distance. The cold air felt good, although not exactly refreshing. I took a deep breath of it and said, “You know how many missing persons I’ve done in my life?” She said nothing. “Lots and lots. Maybe a hundred; maybe even more. Back when I was first starting out, back before the Civil War, I had some good luck with a couple of runaways, back-to-back, and so I kind of got the reputation for being an ‘expert’ at tracking down disillusioned teenagers. That’s how you get to be an expert, you know: You get a lot of people to think you’re an expert.”
We were walking. The traffic made sharp swishing noises as it passed us, or we it.
“For the next I don’t know how many years, that’s all I did. Track runaways. And I was pretty good at it. Not an ‘expert,’ maybe, but pretty damn good. There were some who wouldn’t be found and some who wouldn’t come home when they were found—that wasn’t any of my affair: I told the parents I was a bloodhound, not a kidnaper—and there were some who came home and left again and some who came home and lived happily ever after.” I stopped on the pavement and looked at her, and something very much like rage bubbled up my throat and burned my mouth, burned my eyes and my ears and the skin on the back of my neck. “But none of them ever got killed on me,” I said furiously. “None of them. Ever.”
Banner ran a hand through the dark-blond mop of her hair. “So what’re you going to do about it?”
“Find the son of a bitch.”
“Sherlock,” she said gently. “Why don’t you leave it to the experts?”
“I’m the expert, remember? I’m so fucking expert that I can’t find one missing girl until I trip over her in the goddamn morgue.”
“That doesn’t do anybody any good,” Banner shot back, her voice sharp and loud. “You want to feel sorry for yourself, fine. But do it on your own time. Oh, and try not to get all teary-eyed about your client and her dead daughter, huh? You leave them to me, O Great Detective, while you go cry in your soup because some sadistic son of a bitch queered your perfect record. And most of all, get outta my face. I don’t have time for you, Nebraska. I’ve got a killer to catch.”
She turned abruptly and moved up the sidewalk. I stood there a moment or two, half-stunned. Then I swore under my breath and followed the cop down the rain-slick sidewalk.
“First of all, we don’t know anything to speak of,” Banner said. We were in a coffee shop around the corner, huddled over mugs of, for me, coffee and, for Banner, tea. It was the kind of place I like—would like, under different circumstances. Cramped and overheated and thoroughly, but thoroughly unknowing and uncaring what passed for décor in the plastic franchise restaurants that are dominating the country. It was a long and narrow room, the short-order counter straight back, four turquoise booths lined up along one wall, three two-top tables crammed into the space by the window in front, a low lunch counter with turquoise-topped stools running back to the short-order counter. A man in a white shirt and a white paper cap stood behind the grill, drinking from an amber water glass. A woman in a peach-colored uniform and a silly little peach cap stood behind the counter, on a folding chair, rearranging the white letters on the black-felt board near the ceiling. That was it for population, until we crossed the threshold. It was a long while after lunch and a short while before office workers’ afternoon coffee break, and there weren’t the same armies of downtown shoppers that probably had sustained the place in times gone by. The woman on the chair looked down on us with studied disinterest as we slid into the booth nearest the door. She climbed down slowly, bracing herself on a soft-drink dispenser, an old, bulbous, red monstrosity that said “Enjoy Coca-Cola,” as if it was an order. It stood next to a stainless-steel milk-shake machine and a clear-plastic cake keeper and a row of little individual-sized boxes of Kellogg’s cereals, the kind you never see anybody eating from. The woman filled two amber glasses and brought them to us and said, “Menus?” and we said no, and told her what we wanted, and, in time, she brought it.
Banner had her notepad open on the Formica between us. I had my notepad open, too, writing down what she read from hers. She didn’t have to do a lot of reading and I didn’t have to do a lot of writing.
“The doc’s guess is that she died Sunday night or Monday morning, as a result of the beating. Trauma to the head, he thinks. Perhaps other internal injuries. Perhaps both. We’ll know after the autopsy, which will be sometime after we notify her mother.”
“I’ll take care of that, incidentally,” I said.
Banner looked up and so did I.
I said, “You need her to come down for a positive ID and to sign papers and so on, right? I’ll bring her. She’s still my client. Client of record at least. She threw me out of her place and off the job today, but you know how I am about little things like that.”
“I know,” she agreed. “Sometimes it seems to me that you don’t really get going on a job until you’ve been fired from it.”
“It does seem to work out that way more than it should, maybe. In any event, the job’s over. Donna Berens was just a few hours early taking me off it. Or a few hours late, you might say.”
Banner made abstract designs on her open pad with the blunt end of her pen. “What made her decide to give you the old heave-ho? Keep in mind I have to get back to the office before quitting time.”
“Ho-ho,” I said, “that’s rich.” I told her about my trying to pry information about Meredith’s old man out of Donna Berens, and Donna’s not wanting to be pried. “I don’t understand what the big dark secret is.”
“You’re not supposed to understand it,” Banner said. “Obviously. You think it has anything to do with anything?”
I sighed, and switched my attention from coffee cup to water glass. “Not anymore,” I said, swallowing. “If I ever did. I half-entertained the notion that Meredith had taken off to be with her old man. Obviously not. I half-entertained the notion that Meredith had been kidnaped by someone wanting to get at—or get something from—her old man. Also obviously not. But obviously Meredith was murdered. Obviously she was the target, not just the unlucky victim of a robbery or an assault.”
“You know something we don’t, boy?” Banner said noncommittally.
“Was she raped?”
“No. No indication of sexual assault.”
“Was she robbed?”
“Her purse is missing, and she wasn’t wearing a watch, but there’s a plain gold ring on her right hand that no one even tried to remove.”
“Not robbery, then.”
Banner shrugged and sipped tea. A light lemon scent drifted toward me. “Maybe an interrupted one. We don’t know. The body was found north of Fontenelle Forest, on the Omaha side—Mandan Park,
actually. Near the river. Off the beaten path. It’s unclear whether the beating took place there or whether she was killed elsewhere and dumped. It’s possible there was more than one assault, one somewhere else and then the final, fatal one in Fontenelle.”
“It’s been awfully damp lately,” I said. “Tire tracks?”
“They’re still looking. I was up there earlier—when you returned my call, in fact. They hadn’t found anything yet.”
“When and if they do, they’ll probably match the tires on Meredith’s car.”
“There you go again. Do you have inside information, or are you just psychic?”
I looked at her. “Did the killer use a weapon or his bare hands?”
“A weapon. For most of it, at any rate. Judging from the size and shape and severity of the bruises, we’re looking at something round and hard—a broom handle, say, or a fat dowel.”
“There you have it. This was no blind attack. Meredith was murdered. Despite the savagery, the killer was collected enough to use a stick, not his bare hands. A beating like that, his hands would be as bruised and bloody as she is. Hard to explain away—especially if he had to do his explaining to the cops. And if he was that shrewd going into it, when you’d expect him to be ruled by his emotions, then you had better believe he didn’t use his own car. He used hers, or another that can’t be connected to her, and wherever he abandoned it he made damn sure there’s nothing to be traced back to him.”
“You sound pretty sure of all this.”
“I’m a pessimist. It’s part of my charm.”
“We only have your word on that,” Banner said, and went back to the book. “That about covers it. The body was found late this morning by forest workers. They probably trampled any physical evidence there was to find.” She flipped shut the notepad and shrugged. “You know the drill. We’ll talk to her mother, her employer, her friends, her neighbors. We’ll get her telephone record from the phone company. We’ll see if we can’t find out whether she had an appointment to meet someone Sunday night—and who that someone might have been. We’ll find the car.” She regarded me for a long moment, sipping tea, thinking. “You’ve been at this a couple of days now, Sherlock,” she said at last. “I’m just getting started. Want to bring me up to speed?”
“You assume I’m up to speed. I don’t know where to start,” I said, and I didn’t. So I began at the beginning, as wise men say. Donna Berens and the refrigerated townhouse she calls home. Her reluctance to involve the police. Her reluctance—no, refusal—to discuss Meredith’s father, to even give me his name. Then Meredith’s apartment and the utter chaos that passed for housekeeping. How that struck me as a kind of sneaky, childish rebellion against her mother, and how Koosje Van der Beek agreed that that was one possible explanation. Dianna Castelli and her rather overpowering concern for Meredith. Meredith’s engagement, of which her mother was ignorant. Meredith’s fiancé, Thomas Wayne, of whose very existence Donna Berens was ignorant. Wayne’s insistence that the “engagement” was a figment of Meredith’s overwrought imagination, despite his efforts to set her straight. Steve Lehman, the would-be boyfriend who never got to bat, let alone first base. Finally, Jahna Johansen and my near-certainty that, through her, Meredith picked up spending money as a quasi-professional party-goer. “There again,” I said, “I sense an element of secret rebellion, of someone doing something to ‘get back’ at someone, but being so sneaky about it that the someone in question doesn’t even know about it.”
“Complicated girl,” Banner noted grimly.
“I wish I could have got her and Koosje together. I don’t think Meredith was schizophrenic, exactly, but there was certainly a distinct … I don’t know, division of her personality. Koosje could use all the right words, I’m sure.”
Banner transferred some hot water from the stainless-steel caddy at her elbow into the short white mug. “I suppose everybody’s personality is made up of lots of different elements—dozens, maybe hundreds. There are those we only show to people we’re close to, and there are those we don’t show anybody. Like that old Billy Joel song, ‘The Stranger.’ And whether we show them or not, all these components, if you like, fit together to make up our complete personalities. And maybe how well or poorly we’re adjusted is determined by how smoothly the components work together. Your friend the shrink would know. But in Meredith’s case—Jesus, it’s like she had three or four really well developed personalities going there, all leading separate little lives … and yet all still Meredith. As you said, she wasn’t schizo. Maybe only a step removed, but, always, still Meredith. Weird.”
I agreed.
“Well,” she said heavily, referring to the notes she had made during my recitation, “we’ll need to talk to the mother, of course, but I’m going to put that off until tomorrow. The bereaved are no damn use for the first twelve to twenty-four hours at least. Then the Castelli woman and this Wayne fellow. What about Lehman?”
I considered it. “Can’t see it,” I said.
“Okay. We’ll rattle his cage a little anyway, though. It’s the drill. It’ll keep him honest. This Johansen character bears looking at.”
“She is easy on the eyes.”
“God, I hate that expression. That and ‘feast your eyes.’ What a stupid thing to say—both of them.” She tapped her pen on the pad. “The old man, Meredith’s dad, in Chicago or wherever. I don’t think it’s worth a tumble. We’ll have to notify him, of course, but there doesn’t seem to be any connection.”
“You’re probably right. I sure didn’t get anywhere with it, so I can’t tell you one way or another whether you’d be wasting your time.”
“Yeah.” She thought about it. “Well, let’s see what the mom gives us. People will surprise you when they’re confronted with the fact of human mortality. Sometimes they even do decent things.”
“Only when they’re still in shock.”
“Well, of course.”
I drained my mug and chased it with a mouthful of water. “You need anything else from me?”
“Can’t think of it.” She smoothed the dark-blond hair across her forehead, the long, thick wave that wanted to hang down into her eyes. “Thanks for doing so much groundwork for us.”
“All part of the service.” I stood up and reached for the check. “I’d better quit stalling and go see my client.”
She looked up at me with something very much like concern in her gray eyes. “You’re sure you want to do this?” she said.
“I’m sure I would rather swim in shark-infested waters with a side of beef strapped to my back. But I owe it. Not to Donna Berens. I’m interested in seeing her reaction, but I don’t really care. I owe it to Meredith. Donna may have been my client, but Meredith was who I was doing the job for. You’ve been a cop for ten years, Banner, you know what I’m talking about.”
She nodded.
“Well, this little chore’s for Meredith, too, I guess.”
I suspect there are people who actually enjoy the kind of “little chore” I had set for myself. I suspect it because I suspect I have met several of them over the years. They are not the rubbernecking ghouls you see hovering around automobile accidents. They are not the misnamed sadists who get their kicks from seeing blood and carnage and the misery of fellow human beings, or other animal life. They are not the deeply disturbed souls who seek out the supposedly factual videotaped records of people meeting their grisly ends. They are, rather, people with an overwhelming, almost palpable need to be needed. They are decent people, for the most part; sensitive people. Maybe too sensitive. I’ve known them as soldiers and cops and ambulance attendants, emergency room doctors and nurses and paramedics, and waitresses, cab drivers, and civil engineers, too. They are not necessarily drawn to an occupation or vocation because it gives them ample opportunity to be needed, to be leaned on, to be turned to. Whatever their occupation, they somehow manage to be where they need to be when it’s time to be needed. They are on hand to console a friend when bad news come
s. They are in the next aisle over in the market when someone keels over from a heart attack; naturally, they’ve taken CPR. They are home to receive the call when someone needs someplace to park the kids because dad’s been taken to the hospital. And while they would protest, and honestly so, the assertion that they “enjoy” a task such as the one I had undertaken—breaking the dread news to Donna Berens—I am positive they would approach the assignment more resolutely, more determinedly than I was able to.
Nevertheless, there it was. And there I was, on Donna Berens’s doorstep, having set no new land speed record getting there.
She was dressed as she had been a few hours earlier: plum slacks, billowy ivory blouse, taupe high heels. Her hair was perfect and her makeup was perfect and if she was the least little bit surprised or annoyed at seeing me when she opened the door, she didn’t show it.
“Mr. Nebraska,” she said.
“Mrs. Berens.” I paused. Stalled, more accurately. “I have some bad news, Mrs. Berens.”
Her turn to pause, though only a moment. “I see,” she said softly. Then she stepped aside to let me in. I took a few steps into the cold, almost barren room, turned, and faced her. She had closed the door and had her back against it, her arms at her sides, her palms flat against the wood. “It’s Meredith,” she said. Not a question. Not a guess. A statement of something she knew, inside, was a certainty.
“Yes.”
“She’s … dead.” The eyes met mine. They were … what? Defiant? Studying me, scrutinizing me, looking to see if I was looking for fissures, cracks in the façade? And resolving to show me no such cracks? Who can say? Everyone handles everything differently. It’s a mistake to judge someone’s innermost feelings or thoughts based on how we think they should externalize them. A mistake we commit every day, all of us, but a mistake nonetheless.
Things Invisible (A Nebraska Mystery Book 4) Page 13
