With Sylvia safely in her hatchback, Sandra walked back to Chris. She took a sip from his bottle while he laid it out for her.
“Forensics are what we thought. A fat zero. No fibers, no footprints, tire tracks uselessly generic, no hair or skin, and a drenching of this cocktail of bleach and about seven under-the-sink chemicals that would confuse even the sharpest testing. Then the rain. There’s nothing out there. Even if we do get some kind of sample, it would be very helpful if we had the first goddamn clue of who we might be looking to test it against.”
“I’m getting that feeling,” Sandra said.
“That bad feeling?”
“Yeah. That we’re going to have to wait for him to do something else before we get anywhere close to nailing him.” Sandra took her notebook out of her inner pocket, the USB key full of the Finder’s calls falling out when she did this. She picked it up from the damp cement. “And there is going to be something else, Chris. Someone else. This guy’s been obsessed with dead women and with getting away with everything to do with murder short of the actual killing himself. Was a matter of time before he graduated.”
• • •
Across the city, the man who had killed Bella Greene was staring at a screen, watching the moving blip that represented Martin Reese. Next to the screen was a detailed, foldable map of Seattle, which the man had marked with little stars in all the places Martin seemed to go most often. The beacon under Reese’s car dutifully sent a coordinate every minute, and after cleaning the scene, the man had been able to return to this base and see exactly what Martin had done after running away from the grave. ReeseTech, probably for cleanup or an alibi. Then, and how touching it was, Kylie Reese’s high school. Followed by a location downtown the man had later ascertained was a car wash. Then straight home, where that blip had stayed for hours, broadcasting the stationary cowardice of a boy who was scared of what he had gotten himself into, and who didn’t know how to get himself out. Those domestic hours, Martin with his wife, interested the killer—he could start thinking of himself as a killer again—more than the predictable, amateur darting around Martin did outside of the home. A few days after killing Bella and laying her to rest in the freezer, he’d tailed Martin to his meeting with the fat cop, waiting outside the Pemberton and thinking about exactly how many people he was going to have to kill in order to keep the game going, to move it on to its next stage.
At least two.
THREE BODIES IN A GRAVE that should only have had two. Put that way, doesn’t sound so weird, does it? Just one extra. A joke with no punch line, yet. After the car wash, I bought a cheap Microsoft tablet with cash at Best Buy and used café Wi-Fi to find out anything about Bella Greene, the dead woman whose murder I’d just touched. The killing the cops would want to pin on me, the one that had been pulled off by whoever was following me.
Whoever it was hadn’t given my name to the cops in that message, or this would all be over, and I’d be cuffed, or sitting on a steel bench in a cell. Shurn’s voice leaked back to me from the tape: “If you want to know where both of them are, you’ll have to ask someone else. I only know where one of them is.”
“A partner. Shurn killed with a partner who was never caught. You never gave your boy away, Jason,” I whispered. Dr. Ted Lennox hadn’t caught on in his Shurn interview before the creature was put to death, and it had taken me a step too long as well. If that was it at all—maybe Shurn was telling another one of his stupid riddles, fucking with people right up until the miserable end he deserved.
But if I wasn’t being followed, if someone else had just known where the other body was and had happened to get there shortly before me to add another corpse—I stopped there, because it was just too stupid. Someone knew exactly where I was going, and that I had expected to dig up the bones of Tinsley Schultz exactly where they’d been left by Jason Shurn. Either someone had been with Jason when he buried the girl, or someone had made the same connections I had, at exactly the same time. This had everything to do with me, with someone trying to fuck with me and destroy me. Starting with Bella Greene’s body, and continuing with that forgery of one of my calls to the cops.
Keith was too dumb and too scared to want to do any of this. Jason Shurn and Horace Marks and all the other men whose murders I’d brought into the open to be buried with human dignity were all dead or in jail.
I had a watcher, someone trailing me. Someone who knew where Shurn kept his bodies. What little the online news had to tell me on Bella Greene pointed to her being a total random, an easy-target streetwalker with only a mother to care about her. There was an interview with the mother, Sylvia, brief and prediscovery, all about how Bella could make it right with her next shot. In the picture, Mrs. Greene’s chin was crunched into her neck as she pulled out a flyer with her daughter’s image on it to hand to the reporter, or to a bystander. It got across exactly one thing: all she cared about in that moment was getting her daughter back. Well, at least she had that. There were a dozen more articles about the mother, but I couldn’t make myself read them.
“I found her,” I said to the picture of Sylvia Greene. If I had the time or if it was a sane mission to take on, I felt it would have been extremely worthwhile to make her understand that I was the opposite of the man or men who killed her daughter. That since I met Ellen, since Kylie came into our world, I had only ever helped people like Bella Greene, and their parents. But I knew how all of those skeletons, my work, could look to an outsider, to my wife, to the police. Especially after Bella.
I stowed the tablet inside an Auto Trader magazine and stuffed it under the front seat of the Jeep, making my way home with a wheel of artisanal goat cheese from the grocery store in the trunk. I was going to use it as the rueful, “shoulda done this in the first place” button on my crazy farmer story for Ellen. Turns out there was no need.
The front door was slightly open, which wouldn’t have bothered me, usually. Ellen and I weren’t always diligent about locking up when one of us was home and downstairs, only checking in for sure when we went up to bed. Ellen’s fears didn’t extend to a home invasion. But tonight, there was a car I didn’t recognize in the driveway. A gray BMW, mud spatters on the doors.
I’d never been a gun person. So I took a screwdriver out of the glove compartment. I walked up the driveway slowly, having parked in the street instead of the garage. But when I saw Kylie’s backpack lying in the hallway I booked it, rushing toward the door and running straight past the entry to spin and stand with my back to the staircase, giving me a view of both the kitchen and living room at once.
Ellen and Kylie were sitting on the gray couch under the front window, stunned. A slight man with his back to me turned, following my family’s gaze, and started to laugh. They joined in, and I pocketed the screwdriver. It was Gary Leung.
“I guess we’re on high alert here in Eastlake. Hear you came by the office today, boss,” Gary said, walking over to shake my hand. It was warm and coated with sweat from gripping the screwdriver, and Gary made a show of wiping himself dry on his vividly white Acne t-shirt.
“Had to take a shower,” I said. “Bad encounter with a farm-to-table experience that will ensure I stick to Whole Foods from now on. Hi, you,” I added, talking over Gary’s shoulder to Ellen, waving at Kylie.
“What happened?” Gary asked.
“Never mind, boring.”
“Come on. You’re with family, boss.”
“Family plus you, friend,” I said, and saw his eyes go dark even as his smile didn’t dim a watt. He had psycho eyes, Gary did, a tell that any negotiator or high-level businessperson, especially a woman, could see a mile out. It was the reason I’d stopped taking him into meetings, even ones where he would have made me look good, racial-balance-wise. I didn’t understand why Ellen didn’t pick up on the slight wrongness that emanated from every other gesture or look Gary made—the way he smirked when he insulted you and thought you didn’t notice, his boredom with absolutely any conversation that didn’t di
rectly involve his financial or sexual gain within five minutes.
“I get it, I get it, you’re having an affair and just threw together a quick cover story to explain why you went to ReeseTech to wash the perfume and lipstick off,” Gary said, as I shed my light jacket and hung it off the banister. There was a rim of dirt around the left cuff, a zone that must have been exposed between my glove and plastic coverall shell when I’d panicked during the grave fill-in. I’d have to dump the jacket. All of these clothes would have to go.
“My daughter’s here,” I said, in a whisper, right to Gary’s face. Ellen didn’t hear it but she saw me saying it.
“He’s just making a bad joke, Mart, come on. Kylie knows well enough to ignore anything that comes out of Gary’s mouth that isn’t clothing, business, or tech-advice related.”
“Yep,” said Kylie. “And Dad’s right, his farm story is boring. He slipped in goat shit while he was buying cheese, big whoop. He texted me about it like it was the end of the world.”
“Kylie, don’t say ‘shit,’ ” Ellen said, her laugh counteracting the order. I looked at Kylie with something like wonder, quickly trying to bury the expression, wondering how I’d passed along these cover-up genetics to the person I was most honest with in the world. I nodded a little thank-you.
“It became clear to me that I’d never actually get you to come to one of our meetings, so I brought one here, okay, Mart?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “The store.”
“It’s closer than you think, boss,” said Gary. “We found the perfect space three months ago, started stocking—”
“Ellen?” I asked, cutting Gary off in just the way I knew pissed him off. Letting him get into the story first was the trick, just enough words out before shutting him up. I also wanted Ellen’s version of what was happening, of course.
“We’re having a soft open on Friday, Martin. Everything’s set up, I wanted to surprise you with it, but it seemed crazy to make it a total surprise and have you turn up at a finished store. Tiny little storefront, but it’s rectangular and goes way back, and we’ve designed it to look—”
“It looks great,” Kylie said.
“You’ve seen it and knew about this, too, huh? Traitor,” I said to Kylie. She crossed her legs and leaned way back on the couch, grinning.
“Am I really, Dad?”
“No. And Ellen, Gary, this is great. I’m excited, tell me everything,” I said, crossing the short distance to Ellen and giving her a short, public-tame kiss. I took her left arm in my hand and gave it a squeeze, before I dropped it like I’d gotten an electric shock from her warm, slight limb.
I started to tremble, keeping the shake out of my upper body, but feeling it through my knees, thinking that it was just hours since I’d touched Bella Greene’s dead arm. But there was nothing to be done. I sat down and smiled and asked to hear everything, waiting for my eleven o’clock meet with Keith Waring. Waiting for a knock on the door from the cops, or from whoever had put Bella Greene in that grave. Waiting for whatever was coming for me.
ON THE DRIVE DOWN, I saw her. Just as I Crossed over Fiftieth Street, on my way to a restaurant dumpster behind a Chinese place off Aurora that was reliably emptied every second day and heaped so high with rotting food no bums bothered to salvage it, I saw Tinsley Schultz.
Jean skirt, no tights. Too cold for that, but she had a thick pea coat on. Hair the same color as Ellen’s used to be. I slowed my car down and willed her not to turn around as I parked.
We were at Forty-Fifth and Latona, the signs coming into focus as I automatically parallel parked, ignoring a light rap I made against the Tercel bumper in front of me. She walked past a café and thought better of it, but didn’t turn around—she walked backward three steps and pushed the door, dodging inside for warmth.
I got out of the Jeep and stood there for a moment, watching the door of the café. A little hipster-type joint with a nineties hangover, I could tell from the outside. It had one of those Sharpie-graffitied walls, tags going back decades, probably a musician or two in the scrawls that meant the owner couldn’t bear to paint over it. And in there, ordering a tea, an Earl Grey with cream, same thing Ellen always grabbed to stave off the cold, was Tinsley. I crossed the street, walking away from the café, aiming for the lip of an alley where I could disappear.
I knew it wasn’t Tinsley Schultz. Of course I knew. But for a few minutes of calm and thought, I was going to let myself believe that it was just after high school, that I’d never gone away for watching Darla and Misty, that no one I’d gone to high school with knew to call me a creep. I’d watch Tinsley the way Jason Shurn had watched her, waiting for the right moment to make her to disappear. I halted that for a moment, penciling in a shadow next to Shurn: the partner he must have watched Tinsley with, the one who knew where she was buried, knew well enough to leave the body of Bella Greene there for me to find.
Jason and his partner watched Tinsley, way back then, the way I’d watched Ellen before we met, planning something I’d never dared to say to myself or even think at a certain volume. The thoughts I’d had until Ellen had come to real life, approaching me and suppressing whatever it was inside me that wanted to do what Shurn and all the other men like him had done. Ellen had started and Kylie had finished pulling me back from that brink.
I could see the Tinsley girl through the front window of the café. Her hair bobbing down into the cup she’d ordered, the steam rising to hide her face from me and anyone else who might be watching. I closed my eyes and waited in the alley for a few minutes. Then I walked back to my car.
The Pemberton was near empty, except for a few alcoholic fixtures who took up space in the back booths, clicking away on laptops or just staring into their glasses. I’d parked two blocks away and threaded in and out of alleys to get here, staring at the backs of men’s rain hoods, my eyes fixed on any exposed female wrist I could spot, looking for the leaf tattoo I’d pulled out of the grave. It was either fear or a wish that Bella Greene would be walking around Seattle again, her resurrection erasing my problem. I poured liquor onto said problem as soon as I sat down, picking a booth across the room from the one I usually shared with Keith, paying the prematurely aged, wattle-necked server with bills that looked too fresh and crisp to be used in this room. The regulars I expected were there, along with a couple of guys sitting at the bar itself, facing away from my booth. I waited and tried to do as little as possible with my thoughts, making the steady up-down of the pint glass the main event.
Keith came in with his talcumed after-work and pre-shower odor, a mix of pancake batter and Old Spice. He was carrying a little lime-green file folder that was conspicuous in his sweaty hand, making him look like a dad rushing to drop off his kid’s forgotten school project. I resisted my strong, movie-driven urge to ask him if he’d been followed. From the way his eyes scanned the room, looking for familiar cop faces, he may have had the same question for me. Keith settled into the banquette across from me, and I felt it in the floorboards we shared. I leaned forward and dug my nails into the soft puck of flesh above his kneecap.
“Who else did you sell those files to? Do you have a Craigslist ad or something, you dumb fuck?” I let go and pulled away, in case he should feel the urge to swing at me to conform to his idea of working-class manliness. Keith put a finger on my chest, brushing the foam at the top of my pint on his way, and pressed the digit in for a second while he tried to think of something threatening to say.
“I’ve been very discreet this whole time,” Keith said. “And you can’t say the same thing, can you? Making your stupid phone calls for, what, ten, fifteen years?” A server came by, skinny but with twenty years of brown liquor dragging down the flesh of his face, and took Keith’s order. We were quiet for an extra second after he walked away.
“You know there’s a cop who’s had a hard-on for you for a few months. Because of your phone calls, boy. Her name’s Sandra Whittal, miraculous piece of ass and way too young to be a detective.
I’ll let you guess how she got there. But she’s no dummy, and she’s hungry for you. And guess who happened to get this Greene case?”
“What do you mean, hard-on for me? There is no ‘me.’ I never did anything wrong.” I took a big, masking gulp, covering fear and even a strange churning guilt, something that hadn’t left me since I’d gripped that buried wrist.
“What, you’re going to wrong-place-wrong-time me? There just happened to be a short-stack of corpses in an abandoned graveyard your shovel tumbled into?”
“You and I both know what I do, Keith. And you know I’ve never crossed any sort of border like that.” The server set a drink down between us, was about to ask me if I wanted anything, but thought better of it when he saw Keith and me in a stare-down. He left.
“Before we go any further,” Keith said, “I want you to know that when I mentioned Darla and Misty last time we met, I wasn’t just going on the B&E charge.” Keith pushed the green file folder over to me. “Like before, I made one copy for me and one for you. I just brought this so you’d know I’d know.”
There was a gasping anger in me as I turned the few pages. Saw the mug shot of my young face, the cop legalese around my arrest, the transparently wrong psych reports from Dr. M. J. Trainor, a man I still remembered with a fairly significant degree of hate, but whom I’d been able to use very effectively. I’d read enough criminal psychology books to outsmart this fresh graduate, with his Wayne Gretzky mullet and leading questions, which he always asked while looking at my chin or a ceiling tile. I sold my recovery from what he called “budding recidivism” at a pace that matched the short length of my stay in the facility, the last institution I’d ever allow myself to be in. Doc Trainor, you’re kind of, kind of a miracle. I see things—well now I see I wasn’t seeing anything, really, not until you led me there. I hadn’t thought of his face in years, the bashful arrogant smile he’d had at the last hearing, when he gave me a full clearance. I’d looked him up a few years ago. Ended up in a Thai prison for predictable offenses.
Find You in the Dark Page 12
