by Jamie Mason
Ford was also an excellent choice to sit across from Jason Getty and massage more details from him. Jason chatted, working in his ten-dollar words of nerves and distraction over the big man’s slower manner. Jason, apparently, did not watch enough television police drama. Ford shrugged off any offense and accepted the arrangement for the benefit of what he could discover.
He split his attention between Jason’s answers and crafting the next question for maximum open-ended options, and also, lastly, to watching Tessa. She had poked her nose into the corners and twitched her ears to the household sounds, but only in mild interest, using up the time in the way dogs do between naps. At first, she seemed mostly content to sit at her master’s knee once the two men had taken up their places at the kitchen table. When they were good and settled into their conversation, though, she was anything but at ease in her place.
She fidgeted as if the floor were shifting beneath her and sped urgent looks from Ford to Jason, leaving Ford to wonder what all he was missing in the exchange. She finally cast what could only be a pleading glance back to him, then crept forward the two steps to Jason’s side and licked his hand.
• • •
Houses were jumbled to the point they were sometimes boring for Tessa. The daily business of the same people pacing lap after lap over their closed-up spaces wore stale paths through the rooms. Traces of any interest stacked up until nothing meant much at all. Sometimes shoes were good, or maybe their clothes if they’d been out, or their hands if they’d been eating, but all the cleaning up and scrubbing down just made perfume soup of anything important.
The only thing newly interesting in this house was the man. Worry pressed out from him, over Tessa, like the tickle of a brewing storm. It roused out the fussy that lived in the pads of her paws and ran up and down the length of her backbone. But she didn’t want to bite him and he didn’t raise a growl in her throat. She only wanted for him not to fret.
Ford didn’t seem to see it, the worry in the man. Ford didn’t smile or lean back in his chair to put everyone at ease. He didn’t tell the man that everything would be just fine. So she told him herself as best she could with a stroke of her tongue to the back of his hand. He patted kindness into her head, but he wouldn’t meet her eye.
• • •
The crime scene investigator’s assistant, Valerie, clipped down the hall, hard on her boot heels, stopping at each doorway in her search for Bayard. “Tim? Where are you?”
“Hey, Val! I’m back here.” Back here was what Jason had referred to as the laundry room during the initial tour, but if honesty were afoot, it would more accurately have been labeled the laundry closet.
She made her way to the last door and leaned on the frame to deliver her findings.
“Bet you go through a lot of shoes,” Bayard said with a wink and a smirk before she could start.
“Huh?”
“You don’t grind down the heels?”
“Do your job, Tim.” She laughed. “Quit analyzing me.” She snuck a quick peek at her boots. “Anyway, I talked to the real estate agent. She’s amazing—a real busybody. She knows everything, down to the last rumor, going back years. She remembered this place, no problem. Apparently there was a young couple living here.” Valerie looked to her notes. “Boyd and Katielynn Montgomery. They moved out half a year before she sold it to Mr. Getty.”
“Okay.” Tim grunted and squeezed between the washer and dryer and shone a flashlight through the grille of a tall access vent in the wall behind the washing machine.
“She said she only dealt with Mr. Montgomery. Nice enough guy, very country-proper and polite; always quick with the ‘ma’am’ and the—”
“Val.” Bayard leaned in and squinted into the murky recess. “Can you hand me a screwdriver from that case, please?” He held out his hand, a gumshoe-surgeon waiting for his sleuth-scalpel. She delivered the tool having barely looked away from her notebook. Bayard unfastened the panel and jiggled the bright beam deeper into the unobstructed hole in the wall.
“Anyway, she said she’d be happy to bring copies—”
“Val.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m gonna need a pair of gloves and an evidence bag.”
Valerie handed over the requested items, all chatter extinguished. The louvered panel had covered a hole cut into the wall, a foot and a half off the floor, giving access to the plumbing behind the washing machine. For a man of Ford’s size, it would have been the biblical eye of the needle, but Bayard hooked one arm into the drywall and ducked a shoulder into the narrow space. He reached behind a tangle of pipes and slid a small bag over years of accumulated dust and laundry powder. He chewed at his lips as the flashlight bobbed over his grim prize: a woman’s purse, the canvas darkly stained. Tim ran his gloved thumb across a plastic photo sleeve dangling off a ball-chain key ring. A young blond woman beamed from behind the clouded cover, a brindle, box-headed puppy under each arm, crushed against her cheeks in a gleeful cuddle.
“Val”—Tim’s tone had changed in discovery—“I need you to go find Lyle for me. Tell him I need him to look at something.”
Just as a magnetic compass points north, a cop’s compass swivels toward the indelible stain of trespass. Detectives live for the hidden clue, the evidence that marks the next turn on the path. The thrill of following a hunch and of having been right about it often outshines the paycheck. But there is always a moment of regret, too, when the thing turns up, proclaiming the deed, unmistakably testifying that someone has done something terrible.
• • •
Lyle and Bayard squared off on the concrete walk that bisected Jason Getty’s front lawn.
“Everyone always says that you’re so smart,” Bayard started.
“Well, everyone is lovely. Remind me to send them a fruit basket,” said Lyle.
“Yeah, but you were wrong.”
“Unlikely, as I haven’t done anything yet.”
Bayard extended a paper bag toward the crime-scene specialist. “You said it was a he. I’m pretty sure that body is Katielynn Montgomery’s. She used to live here and I have her purse. It appears to be covered in blood.” Tim gave the bag a little shake for emphasis.
Lyle extended his own paper bag. “Tell me, when you’re sitting on my review panel and it’s shown that I’ve done all your work for you, do I get your raise as well as my own?”
Bayard considered both paper bags. “Mine’s bigger.”
Lyle ground his teeth over a laugh. “It’s a him. And I know who he is, unless he was carrying someone else’s wallet and shopping. Bow before the gods of nylon and plastic, the downfall of worms, bugs, and grave-juice everywhere.” He gave his own bag an imitative shake. “And I’m pretty sure I know just about when he died, too.”
Bayard thought back to the hidden handbag, dark with ruddy stains. “Well then, what the hell happened to Katielynn? And why’s her stuff hidden in the wall when his is out here with him?”
There was an odd symmetry to the scene. Two men in latex gloves clutching brown paper bags in the middle of a sidewalk that cleaved the front yard in equal halves and ran plumb perpendicular from the street to the front door. The door was centered smack under the peak of the simple A-line roof. Two windows to the west, two to the east. Three small shrubs under each set of windows, planted in identical mulch beds that ran around their adjacent corners. Only one thing weighted the tableau; one thing ponderous enough to tilt the picture to the right: the body in the west flower bed.
The slant seemed to occur to both men simultaneously. Tim narrowed his eyes at the matched frown playing over Lyle’s face. Their eyes met in an instant of grim realization, and together, they turned and looked to the east, to the side the Dearborn’s crew hadn’t yet had the chance to dig up.
“Lyle.”
“I’m on it.”
5
Some days deserve a toast for their sheer aesthetic perfection. Mostly, this happens in the springtime, when the memory of the long winter i
s still sharp in the bones. Leah made a strong drink and settled into the deck hammock with a novel, but the buzz soon outpaced the prose. She stared into the swirls dancing in the bottom third of her drink while a circle of cold seeped through her shirt where the glass rested on her belly. Her fingers drummed along the rim of the glass, testing and daring its balance. She admired the sunlight glittering in the condensation, a miniature, flameproof fireworks display in her hand. She wondered if it was the alcohol or the ice that set the ghostly ripples waving in the booze and juice. Booze and juice. And how did that happen anyway? She smiled at the ingredients at odds in her glass. Like welcoming a tattooed carny strongman through your door because he was holding the hand of a little girl all done up in pink bows. Or cranberry-colored ones in this case.
Her thoughts were thinned enough to slide through the smaller gaps in reason, and she rode the drowsy flow. She smiled at the notion of motes and molecules weathering their silent tempest in her late-afternoon cocktail. What did they do to take the edge off after all that whirling? she wondered.
“Ms. Tamblin?”
Surprise zapped the sweetly blurred day back into sharp focus. But her heart tapped again in easy rhythm after a quick once-over of her visitor.
“Hello, Detective.” She smiled and struggled out of the hammock. “Did they transfer his case file again?”
The man gaped and stammered, “Aah—buh—umm.”
“If you’re not a cop, then I’ve really had too much to drink.” Leah laughed. “I lived and breathed cops for months. You guys will never be able to sneak up on me again.” Down the steps and onto the grass, Leah’s bare toes telegraphed to her brain that it wasn’t actually quite warm enough to go without shoes. “Usually they just send me a letter. What’s up?”
The man wasn’t tall, but Leah, so accustomed to peering from a disadvantaged height, looked up into his face as she took his friendly-but-down-to-business handshake. No salesman here. She knew she was right.
“Ms. Tamblin, I’m Tim Bayard with the Carter County Sheriff’s Department out in Stillwater.”
“Then you’re not here about Reid?” she asked, all self-assurance draining at the mention of another jurisdiction.
“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded quickly at the ground. “I’m sorry to say, I’m here because a body was discovered a few days ago in Stillwater. He’s been identified through dental records. It’s Mr. Reynolds, I’m afraid.”
“Oh.” Leah pinned her upper lip between her teeth, then gasped in a wounded breath. “Oh.”
“I’m very sorry.”
“No, it’s—I mean—” Her lower teeth raked and kneaded her lip. Her fluttering eyelids lost their rhythm and were overrun with tears. “I knew, but I didn’t . . .” She sucked in another breath. “I’m sorry. I need—I’ll be right back.”
Bayard nodded. “Of course.”
Leah Tamblin, over three years removed from Reid’s loss and, in fact, never married, stumbled back into the house on widow-weighted feet.
• • •
Bayard’s wife often shook a sad head over what a burden it must be, bearing that kind of news. Most people assumed that this sort of thing was the worst part of the job. But it wasn’t and he didn’t hate it. It was always a profound moment, though, painful and heavy. Tim had seen grown men faint and teenagers throw up on their shoes at being told that their circle had been broken and diminished. He didn’t enjoy it any more than a doctor likes telling a patient he has cancer, but just as the oncologist didn’t order that first cell to replicate rampant, neither did Bayard set the fuse on a disaster that resulted in a death.
His calling was to forge a way to continue, to repair the structure and the balance. Broken spirits and the universal meaning of loss were elements to be attended to by priests and therapists, but the framework of society was order, and law. Damage to these components required expert repair. It always began with a revelation, a dry-eyed statement of facts. Bayard knew that his face would be etched indelible on the memories of those he felled with such terrible news. He respected that role and was determined to do right by it. It was easy, really, compared to failure. Destroying a perfect stranger and not being able to follow up with some sort of resolution—that was the worst part of the job. By far.
He watched the screen door seal Leah into the safety of her home with a bang, and he nodded a silent acknowledgment to the only thing that ever left him stranded on the hard side of his duty: the looming possibility of a dead end. Time and the elements were against him on this one. The bones were dry; the players scattered. The game was on.
This one seemed straightforward enough. That should have felt like good news. But somehow this particular little gem of reason inspired no confidence at all. Instead, in its rightful place, he noted a chill of misgiving.
He strolled a course around the neat, whitewash-over-brick bungalow. The file he’d received from the local police had, through dental X-rays, confirmed the identity of the skeleton in Jason Getty’s westernmost garden plot. Along with the medical records, it had included some sketchy notes and, for some reason, a photograph of Reid Reynolds’s last residence. Bayard oriented himself and stared back at the little house from the same vantage point the police photographer had used for his exterior shots.
It had been a flimsy thing, that file. You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but we do. Guys who wear glasses and pocket protectors are automatically smarter than the rest. Beautiful people must be happy. And a nice dense case file means an investigation that’s going somewhere. None of these are strictly true, of course, but the tendency is to start there and be proven wrong.
The facts in the file added up to no conclusions. A reasonably well-liked young man with modest debts, apathetic detractors, and an upcoming wedding to his childhood sweetheart had vanished without a trace. Dismissed at first as any sort of suspicion-worthy event, Tim could see by the call log that Leah and Reid’s mother had been almost rudely ignored. The car, the only piece of physical evidence that would turn up before the man himself did three years later, was emptied of everything but a few bucketfuls of ash. And none of this had anything to do with the slight, pale man who lived where Reid Reynolds had apparently died, but that didn’t stop Jason Getty from tugging inappropriately at Bayard’s thoughts just the same.
“Detective?” Leah had put on a sweatshirt and cross-trainers and looked even smaller for the added padding. “Sorry about that.”
“Please don’t apologize.”
“It’s pretty stupid. I mean, I’ve known since they found the car.” She blew a stray lock of hair from her face. “That’s a lie. I knew that first night when he didn’t turn up at any of the hospitals. He wouldn’t have cut and run. He would never have done that to his mother.” She winced, pricked guilty and embarrassed. “He would never have done that to me.”
Bayard joined her on the deck. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions. And, of course, I have a few things I need to ask you.”
“Sure. Let’s go inside. Can I make you some coffee?”
“Actually, I’d love a glass of ice water.” It was always good to let them serve you something if they offered. People needed to touch something civil, something normal, in the wake of catastrophe. It smoothed the way for a productive interview and it was a kindness to let them gather their bearings. But, a delicate gut and years of experience had taught him to decline coffee brewed in bereavement.
• • •
Leah crawled into bed a stranger to herself. For years she had been the one whose fiancé had gone missing, presumed dead. Presumed dead was dead enough. Presumed dead was a picture on an easel at the memorial service and boxes of things stored away in remembrance. Presumed dead was a coupon book of sympathetic looks to be cashed in for years and years, and a stash of melancholy to use whenever a grim day needed to be grayer.
Take away the presumed and it was a skeleton in a bag on a morgue slab. It was a murder investigation and a checklist of questions; an order of operations t
hat would attempt to advance the cause of justice. It was an expectation of cooperation and an invasion of privacy. Dead-for-sure was a fact, or the capital variety Fact even, and a call to action. It was a responsibility of the living to a timetable of denial, anger, grief, and all that nonsense mapped out by authorities with diplomas on their walls and letters after their names. It was the boxing bell to announce a round with answers, which was all she’d ever wanted when the loss was fresh, but not so much after three years’ time had padded her pain. This kind of dead was a burden, heavy and exhausting.
She pulled the covers close around her, but her eyes stayed open, fixed to the shadows wrestling on the ceiling. The trees and wind played a creaking, clicking tag outside her window. It was anchoring, that confirmation of solid forms around her, because when she closed her eyes, she felt adrift in a swooning seasickness of unfamiliarity.
But something was recognizable in all of it. The one habitual hurt she would have bet a paycheck that Reid could not have inflicted on her again: the mortified burn of disloyalty. It was somehow pathetically predictable that Reid wouldn’t have died alone. When Detective Bayard had pulled out the photo of Katielynn Montgomery, Leah had bitten back on the urge to crawl under the table. Katielynn was just Reid’s other type: all legs and long, blond hair. Everything Leah wasn’t. If he’d been there, she would have wrung his faithless neck for putting her up in comparison to the icon of American beauty once again. She’d managed a straight face, however, as she always had under the scrutiny that weighed her feminine worth against that of one of Reid’s diversions.
