Z leaned back into the chair and crossed his hands in front of his body in a motion she had come to recognize as his “this is all bullshit” move. The tough guy exterior vanished. “What do you guys want from me?”
He sat forward, slumping on the desk. “I’m at baseball practice and a bomb goes off. Hits my mom right in the face—” He motioned to Jamie who felt the mother place squeeze. Had he ever called her his mom before?
“Then, I find out my dad—or my biol… whatever he is—he’s dead. I don’t know him any better than I know the two of you, but he was my…” Z stopped talking.
“That’s fair,” Hal said. “We gotta ask, man.”
“So, you didn’t see anything suspicious today?” Hailey asked.
Z shook his head. “No. We didn’t have school today—parent conferences. I showed up at 2:00 for practice, been at the field the whole time. Can’t see the parking lot from there ’cause of the bleachers. I didn’t see nothing.”
Anything.
“Then, Jamie came and we were walking across the grass and she screams at everybody to get down. Scared the shit out of me. Girls crying and everybody freaking.”
“Z, it was scary, I know. But please don’t use that language,” Jamie said.
“It’s okay,” Hal said.
“No, it is not,” Jamie responded. “I don’t tolerate swearing. That’s not your business,” she warned Hal.
“Absolutely, right,” Hal said. “Sorry, Jamie, Z. That ain’t my business at all.”
“Isn’t,” she said with closed teeth. “Isn’t your business.”
“That, too,” Hal said.
Hailey stared at her. Jamie stared back. “I’m taking him home now,” she said, daring them to tell her she couldn’t. “You have more questions, we’ll answer them. But not tonight.”
“One more thing,” Hailey said.
Her entire body tensed.
“Did you see Mr. Delman today at all?”
Z’s gaze traveled to the floor. “Nah. I didn’t see him.”
“You can talk to the girls. They were in the choir building,” Jamie told them. “Maybe they saw something.”
With that, she stood and waited for Z to do the same. Outside the building, she pulled a long, deep breath and hooked Z’s elbow to pull him toward the car. Jamie passed Steckler and one of the uniformed officers on the way to the parking lot. Steckler said something to her as she passed, but she didn’t stop to listen.
They were almost at the car when Z stopped short.
“I got to get my baseball bag,” Z said. “It’s on the lawn.”
“Hurry up and go get it,” she said. “I’ll pull the car around and meet you by the walkway.” As Z started for the lawn, Jamie jogged toward her car. Three steps in, she stopped. She didn’t jog. Ever. Act normal, she told herself.
How many times had she watched a suspect and decided he was guilty by the way he held himself? She watched Z. His shoulders hunched over. Sad. Or maybe guilty. Was Hailey watching him, too?
She refused to turn back. Nothing screamed guilt louder than that.
And what could Z be guilty of? Did Hal or Hailey honestly consider that the child Jamie had been raising might have set up a pipe bomb? No. They hadn’t implied anything like that. Was she simply projecting a piece of herself? The part that was actually scared Z was somehow involved.
“Impossible,” she said out loud because hearing it out loud made it real. And it had to be real.
Chapter 18
While Z collected his baseball bag, Jamie got in the car. Hailey and Hal were crouched next to the body, listening to Schwartzman.
Z knocked on the trunk, and Jamie jumped. She hadn’t expected him to be so fast. She popped the trunk and watched him toss his baseball bag in the back.
As soon as the door was shut, she put the car in reverse. “You need to come clean with me,” she said.
“I told them everything I know,” Z said.
She stole a glance at him as she shifted into first gear. “You swear that you don’t know anything about that bomb?”
“You think I made a bomb to kill my father? And set it off at my school?”
“Of course not,” Jamie said, pushing the words off her tongue. And she didn’t. He couldn’t have. “I need you to come totally clean with me, Z. This isn’t like getting caught smoking and lying about where you got the cigarettes.”
“That again. Jeez, Jamie. How many times you gonna bring that up? I made a mistake. I did my time.”
“I don’t care about that,” she said. “I care about this. I want to know what you know.”
“I don’t know nothing.”
Anything. She felt the rise in her chest. Anger burned at the base of her throat. She sped from the parking lot. “Where have you been going when you’re missing practice?”
“I told you. I was talking to—”
“Mr. Pike,” she finished. “Right. About math. But Coach said there were a few times.”
Z shrugged. “Nowhere really.”
“But somewhere.”
Z said nothing.
Jamie gripped the wheel harder. “Did you go see Charlotte in the hospital?”
Z remained silent.
“There will be a log at the hospital. They will know who went.”
“I’m not on any log,” he said.
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” he growled. “Okay. No.”
Jamie checked over her shoulder to switch lanes. The tension in her neck was so tight, the motion was painful. “If there’s something you know, Z, or something you’ve done, you need to tell me. You need to let me help you.”
Z stared out the window. Said nothing.
“You hear me?”
He nodded without looking over.
“You’ve got everything to lose here,” she whispered. “People are going to connect you with Michael Delman. He brought Charlotte to the hospital.”
What was he thinking? Was he surprised? Afraid?
“You have to be one hundred percent aboveboard, Z. You have to tell me anything that might give someone the wrong idea.”
A minute or maybe two passed in silence. She thought maybe he was gearing up to speak out, collecting his courage, but when he turned back, he said, “Can we stop for food?”
“That’s your response to all this? You’re hungry?”
“There’s nothing to tell,” Z said, staring out the window. “I’m starved.”
“What do you want to eat?”
“Fish tacos at Bahia?”
A mother’s primary obligation—feed and care for your child. “Call them and order so we don’t have to wait.”
Z took Jamie’s phone out of the console and dialed. She didn’t ask about his phone. She didn’t ask anything else. She didn’t know what to make of his silences, the absences from practice, the missing phone. She wanted to trust him. He was a good kid. He’d rarely gotten in trouble. But no matter how much she reassured herself, there was something he wasn’t saying. She found herself remembering the slammed door. The broken glass. The anger.
Z was eating by the time they left Bahia and made their way through downtown San Rafael toward home.
“Let me break the news to Tony, okay?” Jamie said.
Z looked at her sideways, his mouth half full. “Which news? The bomb at my school? Or that my dad was killed?”
“He’s going to be upset that we were there when it went off and I don’t want to break the news about your—” She halted.
“My father.”
“Your biological father,” she said. “I don’t want to break that news yet.”
“You’re going to keep it from him?” He motioned at her face. “You’ve got all those bandages on your forehead. How do you think you’ll keep him from finding out that my dad died at my school?”
Jamie went silent. His dad. Delman was Z’s dad. She hated it. She’d worked so hard to keep Delman away from Z, to free her son of the history and baggag
e that came from him. The abuse, the losses one after another in that neighborhood.
“You thinking up some ideas about breaking the cable box or something?”
“Watch it, Z,” she said calmly. “I’m going to tell him. I want to do it my own way. So, we’re not going to blurt it out the moment we walk in the door.”
Z picked up Jamie’s phone to search for something on the web.
“Where’s your phone?” She couldn’t hold it back any longer.
“In my bag.”
“So, you found it.”
He made a grunt that might have been an affirmative.
Jamie looked at him, but he was staring out the window, phone raised to his face.
The smell of the food made Jamie a little nauseous. She couldn’t imagine mustering an appetite. What she wanted was a drink. Amazing how certain things triggered the old desires, even after so many years. She’d go home and chug a liter of carbonated soda water instead.
The feeling would pass.
It always did.
Tony’s car wasn’t in the garage when she pulled in. That, thankfully, gave her a little time to unwind and decide how she would tell him. Z was right. She could hardly hide the news. On Tony’s days to pick Z up, he always came home with gossip he collected from other parents. Mostly mothers.
Tony was the kind of person who women opened up to. Which meant hiding the news that there had been a bomb was not an option. The obstacles to hiding the news weren’t the reason Jamie knew she’d tell him. Despite his move and the strain between them, Tony was her best friend. He was her oldest friend. He was her family. And, most important in all of this, he was Z’s father.
As the garage door closed behind the car, Jamie unbuckled her seatbelt. “I need your phone.”
Z wiped churro sugar off his face with the back of his hand. “What?”
“I need to see your phone, Z. I need to know who you’ve been in contact with.”
“What the hell for?” Z snarled.
“Watch it,” she warned. “Hand over your phone.”
“Why do you need my phone? You’re just like them. You think I killed him? You think I set that bomb?”
“No. I want to see your phone because that is exactly what the police will do, and I want to stay ahead of them.”
“Them? You are them. Tell them I was with you.”
Jamie shook her head slowly. “But you weren’t with me. You were supposed to be at practice.”
“I was at practice,” he insisted. “Ask the coach. I didn’t have anything to do with that bomb or killing him.”
Jamie took hold of his arm. “You weren’t at practice. At least not the entire time. And you weren’t with me. It doesn’t work that way, Z. This isn’t like writing a note to get out of gym class.”
When Z got out of the car, Jamie did too. She was faster. She went around the car, opened the trunk. Z’s baseball bag was thrown in sideways. Jamie pulled it toward her and unzipped the top pocket.
Z grabbed the bag. “That’s mine. Give it to me.”
Jamie didn’t let go. “I’m taking your phone, Z. I’ll give it back.”
Z let go of the bag. Jamie ran her hand through the pocket. No phone. She unzipped the second pocket.
“It’s not in there,” he said.
He was lying.
“I swear, Jamie.”
“Where is it, then?” she asked.
“I lost it.”
She pulled the bat out of the long pocket and tipped the bag on its end. The yellow donut he used for warm up fell into her hand but nothing else. “I don’t believe you.” She moved to the main pocket.
“I lost it two nights ago, the night I got in the fight with Paul.”
“Why didn’t you tell me then?”
“Because I was late. Because I knew you’d be angry. Because you guys were already yelling at each other.”
He started to slide the bag away.
She grabbed hold of it. “How did you lose it? Where were you?”
“At the field.”
Jamie stared at him. “I don’t know why you’re lying to me, Z. Coach Kushner told me you showed up late and left practice early.”
Z said nothing.
“You go missing, then your biological dad is killed within fifty feet of you at your school. Do you understand how this looks? It looks like you were involved. Like you had something to do with it.”
“It’s not my fault. He started showing up at the bleachers. Always kind of out of sight.”
Jamie gasped. “Delman started showing up?”
Z nodded.
“When?”
“A few weeks ago. To watch me play. He was careful not to stay long so no one really noticed him.” Z leaned against the car.
“He showed up there to watch you play? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Not just to watch me play,” Z said. “He worked there sometimes. Did some odd jobs for the school—maintenance and stuff. I’d see him around.”
It was like she was hardly breathing. “Did he tell you that? That he was working there?”
Z’s expression grew tight.
“So, you knew it was him?”
“I saw him,” Z said. “I recognized him the second or third time he came to watch practice. I don’t know. I went to round up a ball I’d hit out of the park in practice, and he came up to me. When he was walking up, kinda smiling, that was when I knew for sure.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” she said again.
“See? I knew how you’d react, Jamie. It’s not that big a deal.”
“Not a big deal?” she shouted, then worked to lower her voice. “That man is dead. He was killed at your school. Not only was he your biological father, but you knew him. People will have seen you talking.”
Z pulled his bag toward him with an angry yank. “Why don’t you trust me?”
“You want me to trust you? Be honest with me!” Her voice echoed through the garage, ringing in her own ears. “Tell me that you don’t know Charlotte.”
The color in Z’s face darkened.
“Tell me that it isn’t weird that your biological father was the one to bring her to the hospital after she was attacked. Is it a coincidence that he was killed at your school? And now I hear you’ve had a relationship with him.” She was shouting. Her breathing strained. Her head throbbing.
“What was I supposed to do? Tell him to go to hell?” Z shouted back.
“Yes,” she yelled. “He’s bad news, Z. He’s always been bad news.”
“Jesus, Jamie. He’s dead now. That good enough for you?” He swung the bag onto his shoulder and his mitt fell out, landing with a thud in the trunk as he ran into the house.
She picked up the mitt he had left behind. What could she do to make him understand the risk? Understand how much was at stake? And he was lying. She couldn’t help him if he lied to her.
The mitt smelled of glove oil, a scent that reminded her of being in the fire station after one of the men had died. When a firefighter fell, the men came to the station with their Sunday best. There, they dressed as a unit for the funeral. The bunk area would be pungent with the smell of shoe polish. It smelled of comfort. She lifted the mitt closer to her nose. There was a dark line in the leather; the section that covered the outside of his hand was stained. She shifted it in the light and studied the glove. Could glove oil darken the leather? Strange that it was only one part.
Once in the bright hallway of the house, she set her computer bag on the bench and placed Z’s glove beside it, the stained side up.
The webbing of the trapeze was darkened too. But it was the knot at the base that caught her eye. Its X-like shape. She all but stopped breathing as she carried the mitt to the kitchen and laid it on a white paper towel. She reached for the silverware drawer and missed the knob twice, not taking her eyes off the mitt. She was wrong. She had to be wrong. With trembling fingers, she pulled a fork from the drawer and used a single tine to scrape inside the knot.
She studied the edge of the mitt, remembering perfectly the smear of blood on the Mercedes. The pattern was similar, but it didn’t mean they were the same. She’d have to compare them side by side. She needed access to that image. She could access it online but, with her login, there would be a digital record of her checking it. What she needed was to have someone send it to her without knowing they were sending it to her. Crossing the kitchen for her laptop, she dialed the lab. Let someone be there. Anyone but Sydney. Anyone but—
“SFPD Crime Lab. This is Sydney.”
Damn. “Sydney, it’s Jamie Vail.”
“Hi, Jamie. How are you?”
“Good, thanks. Am I catching you on your way out?”
“Running a couple of searches, actually. Waiting for them to finish before I leave, another five or ten minutes.”
“I’m having some issues with getting into the case database from home,” Jamie lied. “I hate to ask, but is there any chance you can upload the images from the Borden’s Mercedes into a Dropbox folder? I don’t need full-size images or anything. I wanted to thumb through them tonight and see if anything pops out at me.”
“They’re already up there. I uploaded them for Hailey and Hal to work off, too.”
Jamie wanted to be sick.
“Great minds must think alike.”
“Yeah,” Jamie said, praying that Hailey and Hal were not having the same thoughts she was. But why would they? Unless they’d found something that she didn’t know about. Would they tell her? Z’s mother?
“I’m sending you an e-mail with the access link to the folder. It should come across any second.”
“Thanks a lot,” Jamie said. The laptop was slow to boot—always slow when something was urgent. Tony would be home any minute. She could not be looking at this when he walked in the door.
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