Angels Burning

by Tawni O'Dell

  I know the ugly insult to my mother and me should bother me more but what bothers me most is the knowledge that this woman would never dare speak this way to Nolan or any other male officer.

  “And just think,” I reply conversationally, “right now Betty’s son, Donny, is probably hanging out with your son Ross in that special place in heaven set aside for reckless idiot boys who drink too much and drive too fast without giving any consideration to the kind of corpses they’re going to leave behind for their God-fearing mothers. Yet the slut spit lives on.”

  “You better get out of my son’s house,” Miranda warns me in a low voice.

  “Go on and arrest that boyfriend,” Clark shouts, lifting his cup in the air as if toasting the idea.

  “We’ll arrest whoever killed your daughter,” I say.

  Shawna’s eyes flicker toward mine. For a moment, I see bright, intelligent pain there before they go dead again and return to the TV screen.

  “I promise you,” I add for her benefit, but it’s impossible to know what she hears when I speak.

  ONCE I’M OUTSIDE, I take a deep breath away from the eyes and wonder what life was like for Camio as a member of this family. Zane said she was just like them whenever she was here, but she was a different person away from them. Surely this other person slipped out occasionally while she was inside this house.

  I understand her desire to leave; I had the same one, except mine was simply to get out of someone else’s house—my mother’s, Gil’s, my grandmother’s—and have my own life here in Buchanan, but if I had been part of a huge, difficult, extended family, maybe I would’ve felt the need to flee much farther away, too. When I finished high school, there was just Grandma, Neely, and Champ in my life, and I loved all of them too much to leave.

  I also know what it’s like to have a mother who doesn’t care about you. This isn’t always the same thing as having one who doesn’t love you. Love is a highly subjective concept; everyone has different standards for what qualifies.

  I’ll never forget canvassing witnesses at Laurel Dam back when I was a rookie trooper after a jilted husband showed up at the Grover’s Candy company picnic and put three bullets in his estranged wife’s belly. He would’ve done the same to her boyfriend, but he was off taking a leak somewhere.

  “He couldn’t stand to see her with another man,” one of her coworkers told me while peering over my shoulder at her friend’s remains being carted off to the morgue. “That’s how much he loved her.”

  Huh? I thought.

  My mother’s idea of love was equally confounding to me. She either gave us no attention or way too much, and ironically her slavish fawning left us feeling empty and cold while the days she ignored us were jam-packed with molten emotion.

  She was always in love with some random man and was constantly saying how much she loved her babies and I think she thought she meant it, but for our mom, love had nothing to do with surrender or providing comfort of any sort; it didn’t involve sacrifice or concern. It was an honor she bestowed on others and like a soldier receiving a metal trinket to make up for the loss of a limb, I felt like a hero—and also a fool—for taking it from her.

  Shawna might love her children very much, but for some reason she’s decided not to let them know.

  I make my way through the maze of cars and pickups parked at senseless angles in the front yard that’s already crowded with discarded vehicles, a few dented major household appliances, a rusted swing set, equally rusted bicycle frames with no tires, a heap of bicycle tires, and a stained, shaggy couch sprouting foam and the occasional quivering nose of some kind of rodent.

  I marvel as I always do at this very specific kind of American poverty. The Trulys by most people’s standards would be considered poor, yet they were able to buy everything here that has ended up as trash in their front yard. They have a $3,000 TV and the latest phones, and I can’t imagine what they spend monthly on beer and cigarettes, but they couldn’t afford a laptop for their daughter to help her with her schoolwork or a copy of Psychology for Dummies.

  Derk is sitting cross-legged on the roof of my car. Upon my approach, he lunges forward and rolls down my windshield in a kind of sideways somersault that propels him off the hood and onto the ground, where he continues to roll several more times before springing to his feet and dashing to the nearest truck. He swings himself up into the bed and disappears.

  I walk over and look down at him. He’s lying flat and rigid on his back with his eyes squeezed shut.

  “I can see you,” I tell him. “Are you part squirrel?”

  His eyes click open.

  “I’m part woof.”

  “You’re too fast and coordinated to be a wolf. You remind me more of a mongoose.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It kind of looks like a ferret. It lives in Africa and Asia and kills cobras. Big, poisonous snakes with huge fangs.”

  He sits up.

  “Tug killed a copperhead once.”

  “Cobras are bigger and deadlier than copperheads.”

  “Tug knows a pack of woofs.”

  “They’re dogs, but they look like wolves. Not woofs.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know them, too. They live with my sister.”

  “He’s gonna take me to meet them someday.”

  “You want to meet them right now?”

  He leaps out of the truck and gallops back to my car, darting in and out and over and under the obstacle course of junk and junk-in-waiting.

  I follow knowing I probably shouldn’t drive off with someone’s eight-year-old child without obtaining parental permission and that it might not be exactly ethical to buy him a Zuchelli’s cupcake and pump him for information about his dead sister, but I’m not feeling particularly by the book today.

  I get these flashes of irrational passion where I’m willing to risk everything I’ve worked for in order to accomplish one thing I can’t control. I know I didn’t inherit this tendency from my mother, who accomplished all things by risking one thing.

  I’ve always assumed this trait came from Denial Donny. He risked his life for the freedom of a few bourbon-soaked hours on an icy night behind the wheel of a fast car and lost, but in doing so, he may have done me a favor.

  By the age of fifteen I had the best kind of parents: ones who were dead and couldn’t hurt me anymore.

  chapter eight

  DURING MY TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS in law enforcement, I’ve been involved in the investigations of three homicides, not including the death of Camio Truly. Each was committed by a family member, spouse, or significant other. If you’re going to be murdered around here, it’s going to be by someone you know well, trust, and probably love. For reasons I’ve never been able to understand, this makes the locals feel safe.

  There are a lot of Trulys and that makes for a large suspect pool. I’m not a big fan of the family, but so far no alarms have gone off in my head when I’ve talked with any of them. The same can be said for Camio’s boyfriend, Zane, and his parents. I haven’t talked to her three best friends yet, but Nolan has. They all have strong alibis and he says none of them pop.

  People can be scummy, desperate, lazy, and sleazy. They can be liars and cheaters, manipulators and users, thieves and bullies. They can use verbal and even physical abuse to dominate others, but murder is a special act that requires a big push. In my opinion, motive is the most important piece of the puzzle. Most people don’t run around killing other people; they have to have a good reason or, more accurately, they have to think they have a good reason. At the moment, I have no idea why anyone would want Camio Truly dead, but someone has the answer to this question.

  I glance down at Derk standing next to me in Zuchelli’s Bakery staring wide-eyed at the kaleidoscopic trays of cupcakes and individual-size pies topped with meringues or whipped cream or berries bursting out of the sugar-dusted crust.

  He’s filthy. I shouldn’t let him eat anything without washing his hands fir
st, except I’m sure he always eats without washing his hands first.

  The milk blue tissue-paper-thin tank top he’s wearing is baggy on him and ripped under one armhole. The decal on the front has faded into a white patch of cracks. His shorts are cutoff jeans. The legs are different lengths and ragged; I’m sure he made them himself. I didn’t realize until he got out of the car that he isn’t wearing shoes. I’m hoping the other customers won’t notice or won’t care, since he’s with me. “Official police business,” I’ll tell them if asked.

  Practically nothing has changed about this place since I was a kid. The floor is the same red linoleum. The tables and chairs are still elaborately scrolled whitewashed iron with fake red marble tops and thick plastic cushions that sigh when someone takes a seat. The walls are covered with poster-size lurid photos of moist, glistening cakes, pies, doughnuts, and fruit tarts. Pastry porn, Neely calls it.

  The owners, Sal and Mary Zuchelli, are devoutly patriotic to their adopted country when it comes to their sweet side; a croissant, biscotti, Napoleon, or scone will never be found here, but they put no restrictions on their bread. They bake all kinds and they sell it by the loaf or served one warm slice at a time with a small cup of homemade whipped butter from Sawyer’s Dairy.

  Lena is working this morning, one of a seemingly endless supply of pretty, young, female, doe-eyed extended family members who take turns working here. Without asking she slices me a thick slice off a round garlic Tuscan loaf and slides it to me on a plate with a side of butter and a coffee to go. I also order two dozen jelly-filled and glazed doughnuts. I have a meeting with Nolan and his team later.

  Derk didn’t say a single word to me on the drive over here. I hadn’t seriously been planning on bribing him with food, but I’m afraid I have no choice.

  “What do you want?” I ask him.

  “Six cupcakes and a pie.”

  “Six cupcakes?”

  “And a pie.”

  I dig in my handbag for a pair of reading glasses, pushing aside my diaphragm I no longer need and my gun in its purse holster I probably won’t ever need. I rarely wear it anymore.

  I peer at the prices written on the board over the counter.

  “Fine,” I say to Derk. “Tell the girl which ones you want and have her put them in a bag. You can eat them on the way to see the dogs.”

  “Woofs.”

  “Wolves.”

  “Woofs.”

  Before I can pay, Derk snatches the bag out of Lena’s hand and bolts for the door.

  “Go to my car,” I call after him.

  “Is that your illegitimate kid, Chief ?”

  Chet Shank, the eldest grandson of the original Chester Shank, Esq., who used to be one of our most prominent attorneys, has come up behind me. He’s fixated on his iPad and isn’t looking at me. I know he thinks he’s made a hilarious joke. His humor is the obvious, observational, personal-attack kind favored by second graders and fraternity brothers. I can easily picture him pointing and saying, “Look at that guy’s nose! He has a big nose!” before bursting into uproarious laughter.

  “No, Chet. He’s not mine.”

  He smiles while still not looking at me. He likes to give the impression that he’s never encountered anyone important enough to capture his full attention.

  I usually deal with him by walking away.

  “You sure? I can’t believe you never had any kids, an attractive woman like you.”

  “What does that have to do with childbearing? In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a lot of unattractive people out there having kids right and left.”

  He laughs at this and finally tears his gaze away from his notebook screen.

  I don’t add, “Like you, for instance.”

  Poor Chet: overweight, insecure, already losing his hair in his thirties, a second-rate undergrad and a third-rate law degrees; the kind of guy who checks out his reflection in the backs of spoons and gives animated interviews in his car to invisible reporters about the cases he’ll never have.

  To make matters worse, his younger brother turned out to be whip-smart, good-looking, and a natural-born litigator. He went to Cornell Law School, then came back to Buchanan to make his folks happy and brought with him a Jewish wife, who’s also a lawyer and who kept her maiden name and added it to the Shank shingle.

  “I just had a consultation with a Frederick Dombosky,” Chet informs me while giving Lena some sort of elaborate hand signals. “He wants to hire me to sue you for defamation of character.”

  “Lucky?”

  “He says you and your sister lied in court. What was it? Thirty-five years ago?”

  He shakes his head in disbelief.

  “I wasn’t even born yet. Anyway, he says he’s innocent.”

  “What a shocker.”

  “I know. They all say they’re innocent. But to hire a lawyer after you’ve served your sentence? You’ve got to admit that’s rare. He’s really serious about this.”

  “Why would we have lied?”

  “He seems to think you did it so the cops would stop looking for the real killer. He thinks you were protecting someone.”

  “Who?”

  “Gil Rankin.”

  His answer startles me into swallowing a gulp of hot coffee too quickly and I start coughing.

  “He said you kids really liked Gil,” Chet goes on, not noticing my discomfort or surprise.

  “We didn’t care about Gil one way or the other,” I say once I can speak again. “We certainly wouldn’t have lied to protect him if we thought he killed our mother. Besides, he had an airtight alibi.”

  “He also fled the country.”

  “He didn’t flee the country. He went to Europe to get away from all the publicity. He cooperated with the police before he left. He came back for the trial. That’s not fleeing.”

  And if he was fleeing anything it was his dead wife’s three kids. I don’t tell Chet this. We went to live with our grandmother.

  “Lucky says the alibi was flimsy,” Chet explains with a shrug, his attention wandering back to his iPad. “He says Gil could’ve left and come back. His employees would’ve lied for him.”

  “What was Gil’s motive?”

  “His wife was having an affair.”

  “Gil didn’t know about the affair. Lucky was the one with the motive. Mom was dumping him once again and he was crazy about her. Tons of witnesses heard them fighting the day before and his threatening her. He had a history of violence with women. He had no alibi. His fingerprints were all over the bathroom.”

  “Whoa.” He holds up one hand and gives me his insufferable, placating smile again. “Are you trying to convince me or yourself ?”

  “I don’t need convincing. I saw him do it.”

  “Don’t get mad at me. He was convicted. He paid his debt to society. Nobody cares anymore except him. He’s saying you lied, that’s all. He says you didn’t see him do it because he didn’t do it.”

  “Did you say he hired you?”

  “He’s planning to as soon as he can come up with my retainer.”

  “If you take him on, haven’t you violated some kind of attorney-client privilege by telling me all this?”

  “I’m not sure. Let me Google it.”

  Now I do walk away.

  Zuchelli’s is located on our main thoroughfare named Glencora Street after the wife of our town’s founder, Harold Buchanan—not James, our country’s fifteenth president and the only Pennsylvanian to hold the office—who owned practically half of Laurel County at the turn of the last century, made a fortune from mining, sold his company to the mammoth J&P Coal, and ran off into the sunset with his wife’s younger sister, the much prettier Annabelle, who also has a street named after her but in a seedier neighborhood.

  Even though a major coal company was based here and at one time employed most of our male population, Buchanan survived the collapse of the mining industry. In large part this was due to the fact that we’re also home to a small college, a
large medical center, Grover’s Candy, and AAA baseball franchise, the Buchanan Flames, with their own midsize stadium and adjoining fairgrounds.

  The inhabitants of the surrounding towns consider our burg to be a bustling city. It’s true that we have our own bit of urban sprawl, including chain stores and chain restaurants, six car dealerships, and a hillside checkered with Monopoly-marker low-income housing, but I do most of my living in the heart of town not only because the police station is here but also because I like the feel of continuity it gives me. Our downtown has managed to remain relatively unscathed by progress. A few businesses have fallen victim to the passage of time. The travel agency with its glossy posters of exotic destinations and a life-size cardboard cutout of a hula dancer in its front window is now an insurance office. The newsstand where I used to buy Mom her fashion magazines and hide in a corner with racy paperbacks became a video rental store and is now a coffee shop with Wi-Fi.

  The Woolworth’s where Neely and I used to go after school to buy our forty-fives, watch hamsters run mindlessly on their wheels in the pet section, gaze longingly at the cheap paste jewelry that for some reason was locked up in a glass case, and share an order of greasy fries at the lunch counter is now an Antiques and Collectibles Shoppe, which is a more upscale way of saying permanent indoor flea market.

  Rankin’s, the swanky department store Gil owned, is now an American Eagle. The tattoo place became a cigar shop and is now a tattoo place again.

  The law office of Chester Shank, Esq., is now the law office of Shank, Shank, and Goldfarb. My department car, a white Ford, is parked in front of it and as I step out of Zuchelli’s, I notice Singer and Blonski’s cruiser is parked behind it.

  Derk is standing on the roof of my car, brown paper bag in one hand, the other shoving a cupcake in his mouth. Singer is trying to reason with him while Blonski is trying to grab him, but Derk deftly dodges his swipes at his feet like he’s a small cowboy being showered by bullets from a Wild West villain telling him to “Dance.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Singer turns, red-faced from frustration. Upon seeing me his blush deepens. I know he’s thinking about Nolan and me having dinner two nights ago.