A year later, Sébastien departed the country with his newborn boy, leaving the family a tidy sum. No woman had ever taken matrimonial residence in Veldhoeve.
Sébastien died at fifty in a ceremony in the special copse at the center of the seven sacred groves,. In his hand was a small silver flacon full of apple nectar, infused with belladonna.
Whenever Jakob had asked his father about his mother, about her manner and coloring and deportment, his father had responded the same way each time.
Look to your own eyes for her, Jakob.
Jakob opened the closet door. He touched each piece of the girl’s clothing once, felt the shame and recrimination of his thoughts. He quickly shunned them away.
Before leaving, Jakob lingered at the bedroom door, bringing his fingertips to his nose, breathing the girl’s essence. It mingled, for just a moment, with all the other perfumes of the season: earth, root, leaf, vine, fruit.
‘Eva,’ he said softly.
He thought of the harvest.
It would not be long.
52
When Emmett Mollo opened the door to find Ivy and Will on his porch, Ivy could see the anticipation begin to build in the man’s eyes. Just the fact that a police officer had made an unannounced visit to his home meant that something might have changed, that something was not as it had been that morning when he’d awakened to another day without his granddaughter Josefina. Maybe it was all a terrible mistake, his look said, that everything he believed to be true, the brutal weight of his granddaughter’s disappearance, was somehow being taken back.
Mollo was in his late seventies, and wore a tattered gray suit and black tie with a tarnished silver tie clip. In the middle of the day, in the middle of the woods, he was wearing a suit, Ivy thought.
Without a word he turned and slowly made his way to the kitchen. He walked with a cane. Ivy and Will followed.
In the kitchen Ivy noted that there were printed labels on everything; the light switches, the stove, the refrigerator, the thermostat. On the counter top were laid out one spoon, one knife, one fork. On the table was a plate and a cup. By the sink a small glen of amber vials stood, each on top of a sheet of paper with printout instructions for dispensing the medications.
Emmett Mollo did not sit down, did not offer a chair to his guests. Instead, he smoothed the front of his suit coat, leaned his cane against the stove, and stood as straight as he could.
‘Sir, we’re here about your granddaughter,’ Ivy said.
The man said nothing.
‘Before we begin, do you have any photographs of Josefina?’
The man reached into the chest pocket of his suit jacket. He took out a stack of worn photographs. The first was Josie as a toddler, the second was a school photograph from perhaps second or third grade, the next was Josie as a pre-teen.
The dead girl in that field was Josefina Mollo.
Ivy handed the pictures back. Emmett held them in a trembling hand, but did not put them back in his pocket.
‘Is she gone?’ he asked.
Ivy opened her mouth but no words came forth. Will sensed this, and stepped up.
‘I’m afraid so, sir,’ Will said. ‘We’re so sorry for your loss.’
Mollo took a long moment, then reached into another pocket, removed a single photograph. This one, a Polaroid, was of an older teenage girl, a smiling blonde in what looked like a prom dress. The fashion looked 1990s’ vintage.
Will pointed at the photo. ‘May I ask who that is, sir?’
‘My daughter,’ Mollo said softly. ‘They’re together now.’
Ivy understood. Josie’s mother had been in hospice care. It now appeared that she had died. Ivy could not imagine what this man was going through at this moment.
‘When was the last time you saw Josie?’ Will asked.
Mollo turned to a wall calendar in the kitchen. It was a full year calendar, and Ivy saw that the last forty-eight days had a small red circle around the date. She made note of the first date.
When Mollo looked back, Ivy saw that he was losing his will. She stepped over to him, eased him to a chair. He did not resist. Will pulled out a chair and sat next to him.
‘Sir, we’re trying to figure out what happened to Josie, and we could use your help. I just have a few more questions, would that be all right?’
Emmett Mollo looked up, nodded.
‘Did Josie ever talk about anyone she was having problems with?’
‘No, sir.’
‘It’s our understanding that before Josie came to live with you, she was living with her aunt and uncle. Can you tell us what their relationship to you is?’
‘My stepson Jack and his wife.’
‘Where do they live?’
Emmett Mollo raised a hand. He pointed in a southerly direction.
‘They live nearby?’
He shook his head. ‘Florida.’
‘Okay,’ Will said. ‘I’d like to mention a few names to you, see if you recognize them. Would that be okay?’
Silence.
‘Alonzo Combs?’ Will asked.
‘No, sir.’
‘Alonzo went by Lonnie. Does Lonnie Combs ring a bell?’
Nothing.
‘What about a man named Deacon? Chevy Deacon?’
‘Don’t know any of them.’
Will took a moment. ‘Mr Mollo, Chief Holgrave will need your stepson’s name and where he lives in Florida.’
Emmett Mollo gave Ivy the information.
‘Would it be okay if I took a look at Josie’s room?’ Ivy asked.
Mollo pointed again. ‘Down there.’
‘Thanks.’
Ivy went down the short hallway. The door on the left had bright yellow and orange stickers on it. She stepped inside.
The room was tidy. There was a single maple-frame bed pushed against a wall. On top of the afghan bedspread were a small army of older plush animals. The posters on the wall were from Disney animated movies, none of them recent vintage – WALL-E, Ponyo, The Little Mermaid. Ivy did a quick look through the dresser and found very little. Just a few sweaters and T-shirts, some underwear. Two of the drawers were completely empty. The closet yielded less. There were no skirts or dresses. The top shelf held a large cardboard box. Ivy pulled it down, opened it. Inside was a child’s plastic tea service.
Ivy looked under the bed and saw two pairs of slippers. They were much smaller than a girl Josie’s age and size would wear. They were silted with dust.
There were no diaries or journals or letters or photographs, no personal mementoes of any kind.
At the door Ivy turned back to the room, to the cold light on the faded pink bedspread. Looking back at her was a little girl’s room in an old man’s house.
When Ivy returned to the kitchen, Mollo had a glass of water in his hands. Will sat across from him.
‘When Josie left that day and didn’t come back, what did you do?’ Will asked.
‘I called Jack,’ he said. ‘He said he knew what to do.’
‘Did he tell you that he called the police?’
Emmett Mollo just shrugged.
‘Are you saying that no one from the police or Sheriff’s office has come by to see you about this?’ Ivy asked.
‘No, ma’am.’
Ivy’s blood began to seethe.
‘Is there anyone we can call for you right now?’ Will asked. ‘Any family or friends?’
Ivy saw the man reach again for his pocket, the one containing the photos of Josie. She understood. His daughter and granddaughter were his whole family.
‘Do you need help with her arrangements?’ Ivy asked.
It was clear that Emmett Mollo didn’t know what Ivy meant.
‘With the funeral,’ Ivy said. ‘Josie’s funeral. We can have someone come out and talk to you about it.’
With some effort Emmett Mollo stood, walked out of the kitchen into the small parlor. Will and Ivy followed him. There, on the couch, was a small duffel-style bag. It was blue nylon,
and looked new. Mollo slowly unzipped it, reached inside. Of all the things Ivy anticipated the man removing from the bag – perhaps some clothing, an outfit in which Josefina might be interred – what he took out made the breath catch in her chest.
He handed Ivy a thick, banded stack of twenty-dollar bills.
‘I don’t understand,’ Ivy said. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘It was here,’ Mollo said. ‘On the front porch.’
‘All this money was on your porch?’
He nodded.
‘Do you know who put it there?’
‘I figured it was the church,’ he said. ‘They sent it to help.’
Ivy glanced inside the bag. There had to be ten thousand dollars.
‘Mr Mollo, we can drive you over to your bank if you like,’ Ivy said. ‘The money will be safer there.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t need it. Take it for Josie. Make it nice for her.’
‘We can’t do that, sir, but we can have someone come by to discuss your options. You won’t have to go through this alone.’
Emmett Mollo said nothing.
53
They sat in a diner on Route 87. Ivy wasn’t hungry but she ordered food anyway.
They had visited the Lutheran church on Route 18, having gotten the information from the calendar in Emmett Mollo’s kitchen. The pastor confirmed what they already believed, that the money did not come from the congregation.
‘The reason you never got an Amber alert on Josie Mollo was that it was never called in,’ Will said.
‘The uncle,’ Ivy said. ‘The one she was having problems with. He figured that if he couldn’t have her the world could. He never made the call.’
Ivy had already put in a call to the Holland County Sheriff’s office with a request to reach out to the Broward County Sheriff’s office. They would visit and interview Josie’s uncle. Ivy did not hold out much hope for this. She knew in her heart that the person they were looking for was right here in Holland County.
Still, she took deep comfort that the son of a bitch uncle would get rousted and grilled. He had it coming. And more.
Before they left Emmett Mollo’s house Ivy had taken a number of photographs. Among them were pictures of the bag, the money, and a few close-ups of the bills.
In addition, Ivy had asked the man if she could take one of the twenties and replace it with one of her own. He did not object. The twenty now sat on the table between them.
‘It’s a new bill,’ Will said. ‘Uncirculated.’
‘Just like the ones found on Chevy Deacon.’
Will sipped his coffee. ‘I never met the man, but from what you’ve told me about him, I can’t plug him into doing anything like bringing ten thousand dollars to this old man.’
‘Me neither,’ Ivy said. ‘But I’m thinking that wherever Chevy got the money from is the same place Emmett got the money.’
As the waitress topped their coffees, they took to their own thoughts. Ivy had gained a lot of respect for Will Hardy in just a short period of time.
‘So what was your path?’ he asked.
‘You mean why did I become a cop?’
Will smiled. ‘You know all about me. It’s only right.’
‘Fair enough. Do you want the director’s cut or the Reader’s Digest version?’
‘I’ve got time, and they’ve got lots of coffee here.’
Before she could stop herself, she just started talking.
‘Well, to be honest, I really had no intention of being a cop. My idea of going wild, of burning down the world, was going to Cuyahoga Community College, about forty miles from here.
‘Near the end of my second year – as a theater major, believe it or not – I came home right before spring break. Turns out my mother was involved in this case, this domestic gone really bad. The daddy had holed up in a shack down in Parkside, holding his wife and two babies hostage. The way I heard it my mother dropped her gun belt, earned her way into the house, and talked the man down without anybody getting hurt. The county gave her a citation for that. I remember sitting in the back of the hall that day, watching this tough little lady who raised me on her own step onto that stage in her pressed uniform. And I knew.’
‘Knew what?’
‘I knew that there would be no other life for me. When I got back to school I changed my major to criminal justice. By the time I was twenty I was in a CPD uniform.’
The waitress brought their food. It was a good thing, too, Ivy had felt the emotions welling up inside. She didn’t need to go all PMS and weepy on this man. By the time she finished half her burger she seemed to have it all under control again.
‘CPD threw me right into the Fourth District because I was a female and I was a rookie. Right out of the gate I’m undercover. I got sent to the taverns and the gambling hotspots gathering intel. People talked to me, you see, and I was good at getting inside. Drugs, prostitution, illegal liquor, gambling, stolen cars. I did that for a year and couldn’t get enough of it.’
‘Is this where your theater training came in?’
‘Exactly. I got to dress up. Makeup, hair, wardrobe. I learned to draw from an ankle holster too, although, thank God, I never had to.
‘But it was my second year on the job that I discovered the feel of patrol. I asked for nights. Took all the shit details that none of the other boots wanted. The truth was, I loved working nights. Still do.’
‘Why is that?’
Ivy didn’t have to think too long about it. ‘Lots of reasons. But mostly it’s because night patrol cuts out the wholesaler, you know? You don’t have to go through people, good people, to get to the bad ones. It’s all buyer and seller at night. I had a great FTO, too. I learned a lot from him in that first year. After that, I got partnered up.’
‘Are you still in touch with your old partner?’
And there it was. Ivy’s first instinct was to shut down. But it had been too long.
‘No,’ she said.
Will waited. It was clear that he knew there was more.
‘Did you know any cop couples in NYPD?’ Ivy asked.
‘A few,’ he said. ‘Can’t say that any of them made it too long, though.’
It was true. Two-badge households, happy ones, were rare. The stress that brings you together initially is the stress that drives you apart.
‘Neither of us meant for it to happen. It just did. He was a few years older than I was and I was on my own in a big city.
‘Jimmy and I were on last out on a warm spring night. We picked up a call of shots fired at an apartment complex in Fairfax. When we rolled up it was a war zone. Five sector cars on scene. The shooter was barricaded in an apartment on the second floor and he was blasting away with a long gun.
‘When we approached in the cruiser we both saw the muzzle flash, not thirty feet away. We had driven right into the middle of it. When Jimmy saw what he’d done he slammed on the brakes, turned hard to the right, came to a halt directly in the line of fire. We were blocked in. In that moment I knew what he did. He saw the flash and angled the car so he would be between me and the shooter.’
Will said nothing. Ivy steeled herself. She hadn’t talked about this in twenty years.
‘The suspect got off one more shot before Tactical took him out. Terrance Duncan was the kid’s name. Sixteen years old. The shot he fired hit Jimmy in the left side of his face. He was dead before he closed his eyes.’
What Ivy couldn’t say was that the round had passed through her partner and caught her just under her vest. The baby growing inside her died the moment her father did.
‘When I got out of the hospital, I went to visit the kid’s grandmother. Arcella Richards. She looked at me at the door and knew who I was, that I had been there in the last seconds of her grandson’s life, that Terrance had taken the life of my partner.’
The waitress approached with the carafe of coffee. Will shook his head. Ivy continued.
‘I went to see her after that day.’
>
‘The grandmother?’ Will asked. ‘Mrs Richards?’
Ivy nodded. ‘I went to see her on the anniversary of the shooting. Every year, on the same day. We’d sit over coffee and Pepperidge Farm cookies. We never talked about what happened.’
‘For how long did you keep going back?’
‘Ten years,’ Ivy said. ‘Then, one year, I just stopped. I’m not sure why.’
‘I’m so sorry, Ivy.’
‘Yeah, well. It was a long time ago,’ Ivy said. ‘I was just a kid.’
Will looked at her. In that moment Ivy could see both the understanding and the pain of loss in his eyes. She also saw the compassion.
‘It’s never a long time ago,’ he said.
54
The next morning Ivy got into the station two hours before her shift.
She had a town council meeting upcoming, and to be prepared for her budget fight she needed to collate all the facts and figures for the first two quarters of the year.
The story of Chevy Deacon’s death had run on the local news channels out of Columbus, Akron, and Cleveland. Ivy wondered where the story originated, which one of the hostile crowd had called the media. Thankfully there was no mention of the method Chevy Deacon had used, or any reference to Josefina Mollo.
The BCI team had processed the scene, and the preliminary findings were that Chevy Deacon had put a cordless electric drill to his temple and, with great force, had drilled into his skull. The bit was brand new, available at any hardware store. Because of its razor sharpness, and the force by which it was used, combined with the fact that the drill had been locked into the on position, the tip penetrated all the way through before Chevy Deacon succumbed.
Ivy tried not to think about the fact that the drill had continued to run until it ran out of battery power.
Another preliminary finding was that the handwriting on the newspaper, the name Josie, appeared to be in Chevy Deacon’s hand, based on examples found in the house.
When Ivy got all the budget numbers entered into her spreadsheet program her desk phone rang.
Murder Scene Page 23
