by Lou Berney
The illuminated fountains were just a stone’s toss from the north end of Food Alley. After the show at the fountains ended, the girl in the white American-flag T-shirt had three choices: She could walk west toward the livestock barns, or head east past the big white arch and exit the fairgrounds, or turn south and enter Food Alley. On the other side of Food Alley were the carnival games, the midway.
The photo, according to Mary Hilger Hall, had been taken around eight-thirty on a Saturday night. So the livestock barns were closed. And what girl, sixteen or seventeen years old, would even consider leaving the fair so early on a Saturday night? The girl in the photo, with her feathered earrings and tight, acid-washed jeans, didn’t look like the kind of girl who would go home just as the fun was getting started. In that respect she was exactly like Genevieve.
But there were so many reasons that the girl in the photo might have left the fairgrounds early and not gone to Food Alley. She was freezing, after all. Even if the girl had gone to Food Alley, that didn’t mean that Abigail Goad—the one absolutely reliable eyewitness—had mistakenly identified her as Genevieve.
Julianna clicked around until she found a site called WhitePages.com. She tried to remember Lacey’s married name. Her husband was a big-deal oil executive with family money on top of that. Higgins? Gibbons? She searched both. Nothing. Maybe Lacey was divorced. If she’d remarried and taken a new husband’s last name, Julianna would never find her.
Diggins? A phone number popped up. Julianna didn’t know if the number was either accurate or current. She dialed.
“Diggins residence,” a girl said. Julianna guessed she was in her early teens.
“I’m trying to reach Lacey Diggins,” Julianna said.
“She’s not here.”
“Do you have her cell-phone number?”
“Why?”
“My name’s Julianna. I’m . . . I’m a friend of your mother’s.”
Of all the lies Julianna had told over the years, and there were oh, so many of them, this one was probably the most outrageously bald-faced.
“If you’re her friend,” the girl said, “then why don’t you have her number?”
Lacey’s daughter sounded just like her mother had when she was a teenager, bored and annoyed, the same acid sneer.
“I’m an old friend. From years ago.”
“If you were a Pi Phi, I’m pretty sure you’d have her number.”
“Before college. My sister was her best friend growing up.”
In the background Julianna could hear the beeps and squeaks of the video game that the girl was playing on her iPad.
“Whatever,” she said, losing interest in the conversation. She gave Julianna a number. “But she turns her phone off when she has drinks with the girls.”
“Can you tell me where she is right now?”
“Why should I tell you that?”
“Why shouldn’t you?”
The video game beeped. “Fine,” the girl said. “Whatever.”
Julianna drove downtown. The Devon Tower was the new glass skyscraper, beveled like the head of a chisel, almost twice as tall as the next-tallest building in the city. Julianna had been inside a few times, to eat lunch in the lobby food court, but she’d never been to the restaurant on the top floor: Vast. The name of the restaurant made Julianna want to groan. It would have made Genevieve groan. Someone had been paid a lot of money to come up with that name. We’ll call it Vast, for the view. Get it?
She took the elevator up and told the hostess she was meeting friends for drinks. The hostess seemed dubious. Julianna supposed she should have worn something more stylish than Gap jeans and a faded OU School of Medicine sweatshirt.
She pointed across the dining room. “Lacey Diggins?”
The hostess relented and stood down. Julianna crossed to the table of six women by the windows. The windows! Floor to ceiling, wraparound. The view was disorienting. Julianna had never seen her hometown from this perspective. It seemed smaller, weirdly tilted, slightly exotic, like a toy town instead of a real city.
Lacey had always been skinny. Now she was so gaunt she looked like a dead leaf, golden and brittle. Genevieve said once that Lacey looked like the caged capuchin monkey in the play area at Tammy-Linn’s, a children’s-clothing shop that used to be in Northpark Mall. Not to be cruel, just as an observation. Lacey’s best feature, Genevieve always said, was her blow job.
But Lacey wasn’t, at age forty-four, unattractive. Her big eyes were the dark, pretty brown of old glass. She wore a gorgeous linen jacket.
Julianna was glad she’d never known what Genevieve said behind her back. Genevieve had said plenty to her face. She said Julianna, awkward at age twelve, was built like something the stoners in metal shop had welded together as a joke.
Oh, my God, Genevieve was so hilarious.
Julianna had last seen Lacey almost fifteen years ago, during the wilderness between college and nursing school. That had been Julianna’s first systematic attempt to make sense of her sister’s case. She begged, and finally Lacey agreed to get together for a drink. Lacey stayed for exactly five minutes, told Julianna nothing she hadn’t already told the police in 1986, and was a total bitch, as usual, from beginning to end. She’d ordered a champagne cocktail, the most expensive drink on the menu, and left Julianna with the check.
“Because it needs to be a good cause and a fun night out, you know?” one of the women at the table was saying.
“We could do, like, a step-and-repeat wall, with photographers, when people arrive,” Lacey said. “Like at a movie premiere?”
“Lacey?” Julianna said.
Lacey glanced up at her without recognition. A smile with that familiar curl to her lip. Who the fuck are you?
“Yes?” she said.
“Julianna. Genevieve’s sister.”
Lacey stood up and opened her arms. Julianna had no choice but to hug her. It was like hugging a bag of golf clubs.
“Julianna! It’s so nice to see you.” She turned to the other women. “Girls, this is a friend of mine from way back.”
“I need to talk to you,” Julianna said.
Ah. There they were: the startled eyes of a caged capuchin monkey. Lacey strained to maintain her expression of delighted surprise. The other women at the table sipped wine and appraised Julianna, appraised her Gap jeans.
“I’m in the middle of something right now, Juli,” Lacey said. “Why don’t we make a date for later?”
A date for never, in other words. And, How the fuck, by the way, did you find me?
Julianna turned to the other women and smiled back at them.
“Lacey and my sister were best friends. They used to party like crazy. How much coke did you guys do, Lace? It’s amazing you’re not dead.”
A nervous titter or two. This being Oklahoma City, odds were that at least a couple of the women at the table were married to megachurch pastors. Julianna locked eyes with Lacey.
“Did you ever know,” Julianna said, “what Genni used to say your best feature was?”
Lacey’s grip tightened around Julianna’s wrist. “Let me walk you out,” she said.
“So nice to meet you,” Julianna told the women at the table.
In the lobby, a private corner tucked away from the elevators, Lacey wheeled on her. “What is your problem?” she said.
For an instant, Julianna felt like she was twelve years old again, with Lacey lounging lazily on Genevieve’s bed and spitting venom at Julianna for sport. The flood of pure, sweet joy was so overwhelming that Julianna almost burst into tears.
She managed to hold herself together. “I need to know exactly what you saw that night.”
Lacey didn’t ask which night. Julianna would have slapped her if she had.
“I already told you,” Lacey said. “I told the p
olice. I told them like a million times. Why?”
“Just tell me,” Julianna said. “Tell me everything, exactly. Lacey. The last time you saw Genni, on the midway, what was she wearing?”
“What was she wearing? You know what she was wearing. What is wrong with you?”
Lacey turned and started to walk away. Julianna grabbed her arm. Lacey’s eyes bulged.
The last time Julianna had seen Genevieve, she’d been wearing jeans and her favorite BORN IN THE USA T-shirt. Julianna could see that T-shirt. She had described it in detail for the police. But while the days in September were hot, the nights could turn chilly. That particular Saturday night was chilly. When Julianna first saw the photo of the girl by the fountain, hugging herself, the girl she’d thought for an instant was Genevieve, Julianna had remembered sitting alone on the curb in front of the rodeo arena, the wind biting. Their mother had insisted she bring a sweater, but she didn’t want to look dorky—the sweater tied around her waist all day—so she’d left it in Genevieve’s Cutlass.
“Let go of me,” Lacey hissed. She yanked her arm free and started to walk away again.
Julianna stepped in front of her. She kept her voice calm. “I will make your life a nightmare, you stupid bitch. Do you think I’m kidding? If you don’t give me five minutes, right now, I’ll make sure your husband and your daughter and every person you know finds out exactly what a coke-snorting slut you were in high school.”
Lacey stared at her with a degree of loathing that Julianna wasn’t sure she’d ever encountered before. “What do you want?” she said.
“When you saw Genni the last time,” Julianna said, “did she have a sweater? I can’t remember if she brought a sweater. I never told the police that maybe she’d brought a sweater with her that day.”
“I guess so. Yeah.”
“Did you tell the police that?”
“She wasn’t wearing it. She just had it tied around her waist.”
Because Genevieve never had to worry about looking like a dork. A sweater tied around her waist would only make her, magically, even more desirable.
She had two lightweight wool V-necks that she’d been wearing that autumn. One was navy, the other caramel-colored.
“You didn’t tell the police she had a sweater?”
“Why would I?”
“You stupid bitch,” Julianna said. But she was the stupid bitch here, not Lacey. Julianna was the one who’d described Genevieve’s BORN IN THE USA T-shirt to the police with such precise detail. She was the one who’d told them Genevieve was wearing that T-shirt when she vanished.
But it was already chilly by the time Genevieve had left Crowley’s trailer. Which meant she would have pulled her sweater on. That was why she’d brought it with her, after all. Her navy or brown sweater, pulled on over the white BORN IN THE USA T-shirt. Which meant there was no way Genevieve could have been the girl the rancher’s wife from Okeene had seen on Food Alley.
Lacey stepped closer. “Now, listen to me,” she said.
Julianna shoved her away. Lacey stumbled backward and almost fell. A security guard on the other side of the lobby glanced over. Julianna walked quickly toward the exit. When she got to her car, in the garage, her hands were shaking so badly she could barely dial her phone.
DeMars didn’t answer. Julianna drove to his house. She’d been there two or three times over the years. DeMars lived in a beautiful old Tudor not far from the State Capitol, the nicest neighborhood in the part of the city—east of Lincoln, north of downtown—that Julianna’s mother had always called “Colored Town.” Everyone had, back then, unless they called it something even worse.
There were several cars in the driveway, including DeMars’s forest green Subaru. Julianna relaxed, a little. He was home. She rang the bell. After a minute the door flew open. A dark-skinned teenage girl with elaborately coiled and plaited hair stood there, tugging on the hem of her shimmering gold dress. Mayla, DeMars’s daughter. Her smile, when she saw Julianna, turned quizzical.
“Hi!” she said. “Are you here for the party?”
The party. Her fourteenth birthday. Julianna remembered now that DeMars had mentioned it. When had he mentioned it? That evening seemed like a hundred years ago.
“Can I talk to your dad?” she said.
“Sure. Come on in. He’s around here somewhere.”
Julianna moved through the living room, where the older partygoers were gathered. Aunts and uncles, friends of DeMars and his wife—chatting and drinking, dressed to the nines. Most of them were black, but not all. A few people glanced curiously at Julianna as she passed. She ignored them. In the family room, a group of teenage girls shared a karaoke microphone and belted out a Beyoncé song that Julianna recognized but didn’t know the name of.
DeMars was in the kitchen, brushing barbecue sauce onto a platter of chicken breasts. He grooved his shoulders to the faint beat of the Beyoncé song from down the hallway. He did a snappy little half spin every time he reached over to dip the brush into the bowl.
He looked up and saw her. “Juli,” he said. “You all right?”
“He doesn’t have an alibi,” she said.
“What?”
“Crowley. He doesn’t have an alibi. Abigail Goad never saw Genevieve that night.”
DeMars wiped his hands on a towel and came around to the other side of the butcher-block island. She could tell he was measuring twice. Trying to find the words with the right fit.
“This isn’t a good time, Juli,” he said. “Mayla’s birthday party. You can see that.”
“Listen to me, DeMars. The girl in the photo was wearing a white T-shirt. That’s what the police thought Genni was wearing. That’s who—” Julianna stopped herself. She knew she wasn’t making any sense. She had to be precise or she’d blow this. “DeMars. I told the detectives that Genni was wearing a white T-shirt. But she’d brought a sweater with her. I forgot about the sweater. It would have been navy or brown. That night when it turned chilly, Genni would have been wearing the sweater over her T-shirt. Do you see? She—”
“Juli,” DeMars said. “Stop now.”
“Abigail Goad never saw Genni,” Julianna said. “So the last people who ever saw her alive—it was Lacey, and the kid who sold corn dogs on the midway. They saw her before she went to Crowley’s trailer. No one ever saw her after he was arrested. He doesn’t have an alibi.”
“Have something to eat. Say hello to Angela. Sit down and have something to eat. We can talk about all this tomorrow.”
He put a hand on her shoulder. The gentle father. She shrugged his hand off. She didn’t need the gentle father right now. Or ever. She needed the focused fucking homicide detective.
“No! We can’t. Crowley is leaving town tomorrow. You have to arrest him. Or at least hold him for questioning. I’m meeting him tonight. He admitted he was lying before, that Genni did come to his trailer.”
“You got in touch with him?”
“Yes.”
DeMars studied her. The warmth in his eyes was gone. “What do you think you doing, Juli?”
“Your job,” she said. “The job you should be doing.”
It was a weak shot. He didn’t even flinch.
“You coming apart, Juli,” he said. “Only so many times you can do that before you don’t never come back together.”
Mayla, the daughter, popped her head into the kitchen. “Daddy!” she said. “Mama says she wants to know where her about-to-be ex-husband’s gone and got to. She said to say those words exactly. Hi again.”
“Happy birthday,” Julianna said.
“Thank you.”
“I’ll be there in two shakes, baby,” DeMars said. “Ask your mama if she divorces me, then who gonna be her body-and-fender man?”
“Dad-dy!”
DeMars took
the platter of chicken in one hand and Julianna’s elbow in the other. He steered her out through the French doors, onto the big wooden deck in back. A trio of slinky teenage boys nosing around the smoky grill quickly slunk back inside.
“DeMars,” Julianna said. “Listen to me. Crowley admitted he was lying. He admitted she came to his trailer. And he doesn’t have an alibi. You have to question him.”
She wished he understood that she’d come apart long ago. That this was her only chance to be made whole again.
He lifted the hood of the grill. He moved the sausage aside and loaded in the chicken breasts. He wouldn’t look at her. She knew then it was hopeless.
“Where you meeting him?” DeMars said. Wanting to know so he could stop her. “What time?”
Julianna realized that this would probably be the last time she ever saw him, this man who’d been a part of her life for so long, who’d genuinely cared for her. That was his only mistake.
She started walking away, back toward the house.
“Juli!” he called.
“Thank you for everything,” she said.
Wyatt
CHAPTER 20
That summer, that August, it stayed hot long after the sun went down—it stayed hot all night long. You stepped out of the air-conditioned mall, at midnight or one o’clock in the morning, and the heat fell on you like a fat drunk in a bar.
Nobody on the crew had access to a swimming pool. So after work on the hottest of the hot nights, everyone would drive out to one of the apartment complexes on Hefner, scale a fence, and splash around until the manager or a security guard ran them off. Some nights no one ran them off. They’d have chicken fights in the deep end and then sprawl on the pebbled concrete apron of the pool, exhausted, enjoying the chlorine tingle and the buzz of cheap whiskey.
There was something beautiful and mysterious about a pool at night—the only light in the darkness, a glowing green jewel.
