by Joel Goldman
I thought about Roni’s mother, trying not to see her through my eyes. She turned her head, opening her eyes, staring at me or through me, I couldn’t tell which. I wanted to ask her what she saw, but she closed her eyes again before I had a chance.
When I returned to the morning room, Roni was standing at the windows, her arms crossed. Terry, his hands in his pockets, was making a slow circle around the room, studying the floor. Lilly stood in another corner, talking on her cell phone with someone about funeral arrangements. Kate was still in her chair, entering all of them into her mental database. I caught her attention and signaled to her that it was time to go. Terry Walker was the only one who noticed us leave, raising his head, his eyes creased, his face grim.
“What did you find upstairs?” Kate asked when we got outside.
“How’d you know I was searching?”
“Like I haven’t seen you work. You never pass up an opportunity to snoop. And, Roni was in a real snit when she came back downstairs.”
“I didn’t find anything. She knew I wouldn’t. That’s why she left me up there.”
“If she doesn’t have anything to hide, why doesn’t she just tell you that?” Kate asked.
“She didn’t have anything to hide in her bedroom. As for anything else, I can’t get her to talk to me.”
“That’s because she doesn’t want to lie to you. Some people are so uncomfortable with deception they go out of their way to avoid lying. That doesn’t mean they don’t have something to hide. They may be willing to do the wrong thing even if they have a hard time covering it up. Instead of lying, they use hostility to discourage too many questions.”
“Knowing that doesn’t make me any smarter. She keeps a picture of Brett and her on her dresser. It’s one of those we’re so much in love we can’t stand it pictures.”
“I thought you said she couldn’t make up her mind about him.”
“Her mind was sure made up when that picture was taken. And, when I told her about Nick being killed and that Brett was at the top of the suspect list, she wouldn’t have any of it. She’s still defending him. Says he couldn’t have done it. What did you pick up from the people in that room?”
“When Lilly told Roni to take care of her mother, Roni bristled. Lilly runs the show, and Roni may have had all of that she can take. I watched her with her mother. She loves her and resents her, which is par for the course when the child becomes the parent.”
“And Lilly?”
“She’s a very strong woman who is short on patience and can’t stand weakness. You remember how Ellen Koch showed contempt for Peggy Martin? That’s the way Lilly looked at Roni.”
“What about Terry Walker? How did Lilly look at him?”
“That was a puzzle. She hasn’t seen him in fifty years, but one minute she’s mad as hell at him and the next she’s all gaga and dewy-eyed.”
“Any idea how he feels about her?”
“He’s pretty distant. I’m not sure he has much feeling about anybody.”
Chapter Sixty-three
“I hope Lucy is having a better day than we are,” Kate said.
“I don’t know. It will be hard for her to top two dead bodies and one fractured family.”
“Don’t say that. You could be describing the Martins.”
She was right, but the Martin family wasn’t the only one to which that description applied. Frank and Marie Crenshaw were dead, their children orphaned, and, depending on what happened to Brett Staley, the description could fit his family as well. It was as if someone had singled out these three families for destruction.
In a world where chaos and randomness held more sway than five-year plans, such misfortune could be nothing more than a commentary on harsh reality. But these families were too closely connected for their pain and suffering to be dismissed as a run of bad luck. The Crenshaws and Staleys were joined by blood and marriage, while Nick Staley and Jimmy Martin had grown up together, gone to war together, and come home together.
“Not just the Martins, all of them, the Martins, the Staleys, and the Crenshaws,” I said, running down the list of missing, dead, and damaged. “There must be something else that ties them together, something that would explain all of that.”
“Why? Remember what I said about looking for a theory of everything. It’s like when there’s a cluster of brain cancer cases in one small community and right away people start claiming they’re all victims of a corporate conspiracy to pollute the water supply, only it turns out that the cluster is just one series of random events among billions of random events. We live in a world governed by physical laws we can’t control or change, and bad things just happen.”
“And that world is populated by people with free will who screw up, go nuts, and make a hell of lot of those bad things possible. These three families had one other thing in common. They were all on the ropes financially,” I said.
“What difference does that make? Almost one in ten people in this country are out of work, and we’re in the worst recession since the Great Depression.”
“It could make all the difference depending on what they decided to do about it.”
“Okay,” Kate said. “Start with Jimmy Martin. He stole five thousand dollars worth of copper tubing, but it was worthless to him unless could sell it to someone. Frank Crenshaw was in the scrap business. He could have parceled the copper out with other scrap and split the money with Jimmy. It may not have been enough money to keep them both above water, but it was a start.”
“Which could explain why Frank wanted a gun. Selling stolen property may have made him nervous. And, just before he shot Marie, he told her something that really set her off. That could have been it.”
“But that leaves out Nick Staley. Where does he fit in?”
“Hey, aren’t you the one who said I should quit looking for a theory of everything?”
“No. I’m the one who told you never to remind me of what I just said. I could be wrong. Maybe we need to look at it another way.”
I thought for a minute, charting the permutations in my head, a light going on. “Maybe Nick Staley isn’t the one who doesn’t fit in. He and Frank Crenshaw are both dead, which could make Jimmy Martin the odd man out because he’s still alive.”
Kate grinned. “A theory of everything after all.”
“Almost everything. What about Evan and Cara Martin? No matter what Frank, Nick, and Jimmy were into, I don’t see how that puts Jimmy’s kids in the mix.”
“It doesn’t have to,” Kate said. “Think of the two cases like circles that touch at a single point but don’t overlap. One circle is Staley, Crenshaw, and Martin, and the other circle is Evan and Cara. Jimmy Martin is the point of contact between the two circles, but that doesn’t mean one has anything to do with the other. Don’t forget that there are lots of other circles, including one with Adam Koch’s name on it, and his circle definitely overlaps Evan and Cara’s.”
“I’ll give you that. Adam is a lot easier to sell on the kidnapping than Jimmy Martin.”
“Which means I’m right and the order of the universe is restored,” she said.
“And I’m hungry. It’s after one o’clock. I need a burger, and I know where I’m going to get one.”
“Where? I only ask because I’m driving. I can circle the block while you eat if you prefer,” she said, giving me a gentle poke in my ribs, her eyes bright and filled with mischief.
She was at her most irresistible when she was alive like this, at turns funny, indignant, insistent, and brilliant, enriching her beauty, masking her fears and insecurities, making me forget about mine and the flaws in our relationship. It was a moment filled with promise and pain and one that I had to let pass.
“Westport Flea Market. Best burger in town. I’ll call Lucy and Simon and tell them to meet us there.”
It took twenty minutes to get to Westport, a midtown collection of bars and restaurants, some more downscale than others. The Flea Market was the only one that count
ed a serial killer as one of its vendors back when it was just a flea market. Bob Berdella, who kidnapped, tortured, and killed at least six men in the mid-eighties, sold trinkets at the flea market. He died in prison of a heart attack, the Flea Market switched from trinkets to burgers, and the world became a better place.
The restorative power of the Flea Market’s cheeseburgers, fries, and rings may never be documented in a double-blind, peer-reviewed study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, but that’s only because the editors do not understand that holistic nutrition means eating the whole thing. While stuffing our faces, we traded notes.
“Ellen Koch is a mess,” Lucy said. “She alternates between blaming herself for what Adam did and insisting that she had no way of knowing there was anything wrong with him and that, if there was, it was all her ex-husband’s fault.”
“Besides playing dodgeball with her, did you learn anything we didn’t already know?” I asked.
“Nope. I had a hard time getting her to focus. I pushed her as hard as I could about the morning the kids disappeared. She finally admitted that she suspected Adam had spent that night at Peggy’s. She said she woke up during the night and couldn’t get back to sleep. She checked on Adam to make sure he was home. He was gone, but his truck was in the driveway. It wasn’t hard for her to figure out where he was.”
“Did she see him come home?”
“She says she didn’t. Says she tried to wait up for him but fell asleep and didn’t see him come in.”
“What about Peggy? Did you talk to her?”
“I tried. She hasn’t stopped drinking since she found out about Adam, and she’s not a clear-thinking drunk. She won’t be any help until she sobers up and dries out. While I was at her house, the doorbell rang. It was a couple of the neighbors that had contributed to the fund Ellen started to raise money to hire me. They wanted Peggy to give them their money back.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I told them that Peggy was broke and that I’d be happy to write them and anyone else who felt the same way a check, but that I’d keep looking for Evan and Cara because it wasn’t the kids’ fault that their parents were so screwed up. One of them started to cry and said she was sorry and the other one got mad and called me a bitch, but neither one of them took me up on my offer.”
“Did you take another run at Jimmy Martin?”
“Not yet. Thought I’d try him this afternoon. How’d you guys make out?”
I explained about Nick Staley and Eberto Garza and how much flak I was getting from Roni Chase. Kate summarized her impressions of Lilly and Roni and Terry Walker. Simon repeated what he’d told me about the robberies of the gun dealers, adding that he’d had no luck getting a line on Cesar Mendez.
“Short of standing on a corner in his neighborhood with twenty-dollar bills sticking out of your pockets and a sign around your neck saying you’d like to buy drugs, I’m out of ideas,” he said.
“At this point, it all comes back to Jimmy Martin,” I said. “He’s the only one left who knows what went down.”
“And he’s not talking,” Lucy said.
“Then I’ll have to give him a reason.”
“You have one in mind?” Lucy asked. “Because it better be a good one. Finding his kids hasn’t done the trick.”
“Best one left. Talking to me may be the only way he can stay alive.”
Chapter Sixty-four
The Municipal Farm felt like a summer camp gone to seed compared to the Jackson County Jail with its two-person cells, barred slits cut high in the cell wall masquerading as windows, armed guards, and body cavity searches. I left my driver’s license and gun with a sheriff’s deputy, pocketing my claim check, and followed another deputy to a room where Jimmy was waiting. The room was not much bigger than a closet, with a wall-to-wall table and glass panel subdividing it and a phone we could use to talk to one another, someone else listening and watching, sight unseen.
He was shackled, hands and legs, his face bruised, his nose bent, probably broken, the down payment he’d made for attempted escape and assault with a deadly weapon. Twice before when I’d seen him at the Farm, he had carried himself with a swagger, relishing his defiance of the system, certain he could do the time and thumb his nose at his wife, the court, and anyone else who tried to tell him what to do. That was gone, the chains and the beating he’d taken bowing his stiff neck, leaving him tense, looking over his shoulder even though we were alone. He sank onto his chair, cradling the phone on his shoulder, anxious and jittery.
Adrienne Nardelli had questioned him and gotten nothing. Kate had tried manipulating him, then trusting him, and had a bandage on her neck to show for her trouble. It was my turn.
“You don’t look so good,” I told him.
“Bad night.”
“Escape and assault aren’t exactly good career moves.”
“Like mine was going anywhere.”
“Well, if it makes you feel better, Frank Crenshaw and Nick Staley were in the same boat, career-wise, that is.”
He flicked his eyes at me, then down at the table. “I wouldn’t know nothing about that.”
“’Course you wouldn’t. How do you see this whole thing working out for you now?”
“What’s it to you?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. I won’t lose any sleep over you. I’m just wondering how you see your options now that you’ve tacked two big-time felonies onto your theft charge. Your lawyer might have been able to get you a decent deal on the theft, maybe even probation, but now you’re looking at a serious stretch. And the whole thing with your kids, you not helping with finding them, the judge is going to screw you down tighter than tight.”
“I did what I did. Can’t do nothing about it.”
“True, but doing the time is the least of your problems.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying your biggest problem is living long enough to do the time. Nick Staley is dead.”
He squirmed in his chair, his color up and his eyes wide, then narrow and wary.
“Too bad.”
“You interested in how it happened?”
“Make a difference?”
“Not to Nick, maybe to you because he didn’t die peacefully surrounded by family and friends. He was shot to death in the middle of the night at his store.”
He sucked in a quick breath, pushing it out, fighting to stay calm. “Dead is dead. Got nothing to do with me.”
“Actually, I think it does. See, I’ve been piecing this together, trying to figure out what was going on between you and Nick and Frank Crenshaw.”
“Nothing’s going on. I knew them, that’s all.”
“A lot better than you let on. That’s the way it is in Northeast. Everybody knows everybody, at least that’s true for the families that have lived there a long time and you’re third generation.”
He jolted forward in his chair, the phone falling into his lap, fumbling with shackled wrists to pick it up.
“What if I did, so what?”
“So you lied about your relationships with them or at least you tried to make it sound like you hardly knew them, and there has to be a reason for a man to lie about a simple thing like that. Only reason I can think of is that the three of you were into something you wanted to keep private, something illegal, like stealing copper so that Frank could sell it for scrap.”
“I got nothing to say about that. You’re not my lawyer.”
“The three of you didn’t have two quarters to rub together. Frank and Nick were going out of business, and you were out of work. Stealing was one way to get by, and construction materials made sense because Frank could move the stuff for you. But what was in it for Nick? Why cut him in on it when he’s not taking any risk or bringing anything to the table? So I think maybe it’s just the two of you, you and Frank. Then someone killed Frank and Nick, which leaves you the last man standing, only you’re at the Farm, where it’s not as hard to kill a man
as you might think. A Mexican kid named Ricky Suarez lands there on a drunk and disorderly, you get into it with him before he has a chance to say hello, and the next day you try to escape. There’s no way to paint that picture that makes you anything but a marked man.”
“I got antsy, that’s all. Saw a chance and took it,” he said.
“You told Kate Scranton that you knew you couldn’t escape and that you just wanted off the Farm. Only county lockup isn’t my idea of an upgrade. Lot more bad guys in here, guys who’d put a shank in your back as a favor or just because they’re bored. Man has to be pretty damned scared to take a chance like that, and after what’s happened to Crenshaw and Staley, I’d say you had good reason.”
He looked around again, licked his lips, and edged closer to the glass, his voice a whisper.
“I thought they’d put me in solitary.”
“Where you’d be safe.”
“Safer, anyway.”
“From who? Ricky Suarez, the Mexican kid?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit. How could you not know?”
“Listen, I’m telling you,” he said, his shoulders hunched. “I don’t know. I just did my part and kept my mouth shut. I learned how to follow orders in the Army.”
“What was your part?”
“Steal the copper. Frank said he could move it, no problem; just mix it in with a bunch of different loads of scrap. We’d done it a couple of other times, small loads, just to see if we could make it work, pick up a few bucks, and it went okay, so Frank, he says it’s time to go big. I got a buddy working a job east of downtown. He tells me there’s no weekend security on account of the general contractor is going broke and laid them off. Saturday comes, and I drive right onto the site, load my truck, and I’m gone. Not twenty minutes later, some eager-beaver shit-head nigger with a badge pulls me over because I’ve got an expired tag. Can you believe the shit that happens to me, man?”
