Angels Burning

by Tawni O'Dell

  “Where was their mother during all this?”

  “All Clark would tell me was she’s dead. Killed in a car accident.”

  The hair on the back of my neck stands on end, but I’m not sure why.

  “You just told me you loved Clark’s children. What changed?”

  She goes back into her purse for another tissue and wipes her face.

  “One day,” she begins, “Miranda takes me aside and tells me the mother of Clark’s children was his cousin Layla.”

  This latest horrible piece of the puzzle doesn’t arouse any kind of reaction from Shawna. I suppose by the time she discovered it, nothing could shock her.

  “I guess they’d been doing it for years. No one knew. Layla kept having babies, and her mom kept helping her raise them. No one ever knew who the father was or if there was a bunch of fathers. No one cared. She said it was her business and everybody stayed out of it.

  “After she died, Clark went and told her mother—his aunt Addy—everything and said he wanted the kids. I don’t know what went on between them. Miranda and Addy are bitter enemies. I’ve never even met her. But I would guess Addy loved those three babies and wouldn’t want to give them up. But under the circumstances what could she do? They were Clark’s legal property. Then I found out for myself why she might have let them go.”

  She stops speaking and gives me a frank look with no emotion behind it like she’s giving me the instructions to install some random appliance.

  “She was repulsed by them after she knew,” she says, “ ’cause that’s how I felt. I could barely look at them after that. And I hated myself for feeling that way. It wasn’t their fault. But I couldn’t love them anymore.”

  As much as I’d like to end this conversation, there’s an important reason why I began it and I haven’t reached my goal yet, although I’m not sure I can get there through Shawna alone. She’s talking well now. I need to fire questions at her.

  “Why would Miranda tell you this? She had to know it might affect the way you felt about the kids. You’d think she’d want you to love them and take good care of them.”

  “She knew I loved them. I think that’s why she did it. She wanted to hurt me. She was always hurting me. Hurting everyone. It’s what she does best.”

  “Do the children know?”

  “They think their real mom was a nice lady who was killed in a car accident.”

  “They don’t remember anything about living with her or Addy?”

  “Camio was only a few months old when Layla died and they went to live with Clark and Miranda. Jessy would’ve been three. Shane five. They were too young to remember.”

  “And they’ve never wanted to find out anything about their mother? They’ve never wondered why they’ve never met any of her family?”

  “Once Miranda tells you something’s a dead topic, it’s a dead topic.”

  I let the bomb drop.

  “Could she have killed Camio?”

  The same smile she showed me when she described herself as a hell-raiser returns but only for a second before it turns into something dark.

  “Death would be a gift,” she tells me. “An escape from her. She wants people alive so she can torture them.”

  “Is there anyone in the family you think might have done this?”

  She shakes her head. “These are hard, mean people, but they seem to draw the line at killing. Besides, none of them had a reason to kill Camio.”

  That you know of, I think to myself.

  “Who do you think did it?” I ask.

  Her eyes fill with tears again, but they don’t fall this time.

  “A stranger,” she says, running her finger over the photo of her cat. “I want it to be a stranger.”

  chapter eighteen

  I LEAVE THE INTERVIEW ROOM with the intention of stripping off my clothes, kicking off my shoes, getting in my car, and driving naked until I reach the nearest ocean, then jumping in and swimming until I find a deserted island where I can live alone far away from all people and the things they do to each other.

  But the feeling passes.

  I run into Nolan and two uniformed troopers. I was right. They had been searching Lonnie Harris’s house earlier. They stopped by on their way out of town after hearing shots had been fired at the police station.

  “That was a great interview, Chief,” one of the troopers says.

  The other trooper smiles and nods his agreement.

  Nolan stands behind them, hands in his pants pockets, his lower jaw working a piece of gum, his sunglasses hiding his eyes. He doesn’t say anything.

  Singer and Blonski are here as well. I motion them toward me and speak to them out of ear range of the others.

  “Give Mrs. Truly a few minutes, then take her home. Be very polite and kind.”

  I look around the station. My eyes light on Everhart’s desk. A bunch of his buddies who race in demolition derbies with him on the weekends thought it would be funny to send a big sissy bouquet of congratulatory flowers to his workplace.

  “And give her those flowers,” I add.

  Blonski raises his eyebrows at me.

  “Just do it.”

  I know Nolan will want to talk to me, but I don’t return to him and his troopers. I head to my office.

  I take a seat behind my desk and try to look as composed as possible.

  I haven’t done much to personalize this space other than put a few framed photos on top of my filing cabinet. There’s one of Champ when he was Mason’s age in a Pirates ball cap with a bat thrown over his shoulder grinning at the camera, freckle-faced from the summer sun. Gil would have already been molesting him but we didn’t know. Or I should say some of us didn’t know.

  I’ve studied this photo hundreds of times looking for an outward sign I missed. I’ve tilted it from side to side thinking in a certain light at a certain angle it might react like a truth-revealing hologram and his dear face would turn into a screaming death mask of agony, or I’d spy Gil with devil’s horns sprouting from his shellacked hair leering over his shoulder, but I’ve never been able to see anything in it but a normal, happy-go-lucky boy, and I guess that’s why I like it.

  Next to it is a photo of Neely and me, six and eight years old, standing next to Grandma’s old Plymouth on an Easter Sunday suffering the indignity of being forced to wear dresses to church, our skinny arms linked, our knobby-kneed bare legs ending in identical white patent-leather shoes we immediately scuffed up, me accidentally, Neely on purpose. My dress was navy, fitted, with a belt and Peter Pan collar that I wore like a uniform, and I had to restrain myself from directing traffic in the church parking lot or telling the little kids to slow down; Neely’s was a pale yellow shift patterned with tiny daisies that she loathed.

  Grandma used to call us Salt and Pepper. It wasn’t a wildly original nickname, but it made sense for us: Neely with her light, almost Nordic good looks (Passing Through could have been a Viking, I used to tell her, or maybe a ski instructor) and me with Denial Donny’s black Irish mop of tangled dark curls and dark brown eyes that Mom’s genes had diluted slightly, like putting cream in coffee.

  The final photo is one of only a handful I’ve ever seen of my mother and the three of us. We’re sitting around a picnic table at the Lick n’ Putt. We look completely normal. A lovely woman with three lovely children about to eat some lovely hot dogs and fries and play some miniature golf.

  I’ve seen even fewer photos of my mother alone. For all her vanity, Mom didn’t like to have her picture taken. Neely and I used to theorize while playing in the attic of our little crooked house amid the spider skeletons why this was true. Neely thought she was a wanted woman, on the lam from the police. I thought it was because she believed, like some tribes of Native Americans and Australian aborigines, that the camera had magical powers over her inner essence and she was protecting herself; it would’ve been a crime for a girl that pretty to have her soul stolen by Kodak.

  These photos make me want
to laugh out loud remembering the good times we had but also make me want to cringe.

  “We’re funny and sad at the same time,” Neely once said to me while riding our bikes home from Laurel Dam, “like a turtle on its back.”

  I suddenly realize why the only picture Shawna Truly displayed in her house was her wedding photo to Clark. I thought it was a stroking of her ego recalling how pretty she once was, but it was self-flagellation, a constant reminder of the mistake she made that sealed her fate and made her what she’d become.

  Nolan doesn’t knock. If I were a man, he would knock. Even if he didn’t respect me or like me or suspected me of murder, he would knock.

  I’m mad at him. Not because he didn’t knock but because he didn’t take advantage of my vulnerability last night and have sex with me at a time when I clearly wasn’t thinking straight but when I desperately wanted to be manhandled into a state of mind-numbing distraction.

  He stops in front of our murder board. It’s only the second one I’ve put together during my tenure as chief. The other two homicides that occurred during my career happened when I was a trooper and when I was an officer here.

  “I always thought the purpose of a murder board was to be able to share information with your squad,” he says.

  “It has wheels. I move it back and forth. I like to look at it when I’m in my office.”

  He glances behind and sees there’s a chalkboard on the other side.

  “We borrowed it from the elementary school,” I explain. “We don’t have a lot of murders here.”

  He gives me a patronizing shake of his head.

  “Did you borrow the markers, too? I like how every suspect gets his own color. Why does Eddie Truly get green?”

  “Ex-military.”

  “The Massey kid, blue?”

  “He’s a boy.”

  “Lonnie Harris, brown?”

  “Shithead.”

  “Shawna Truly, purple?”

  “Royalty. The Queen of Crud.”

  “Miranda Truly, red?”

  “Satan.”

  He shakes his head again.

  “Did you find anything at the Harris place?” I ask him.

  “A lot of porn. A loaded handgun in an unlocked closet, and he and his wife have three little kids running around.”

  “Lovely.”

  “But nothing that ties him to the Truly murder.”

  I take a pack of markers out of my top desk drawer and join him at the board.

  Under Shawna’s picture I write in purple: Camio wasn’t her child. Real parents were cousins. Could this be motive?

  Nolan studies it for a moment. He still has his sunglasses on. I can’t tell what he’s thinking.

  I take out the black marker and in the center of the board I write: Could this be THE motive? I add arrows pointing from the question to each of the Trulys.

  He doesn’t comment.

  He takes the green marker and writes under Eddie: No alibi.

  Then he trades the green marker for my black one and writes on my timeline of Camio’s missing hours: TOD 7:30 p.m.

  “You have the definite time of death and didn’t tell me? And it’s over an hour before Zane received those texts?”

  I was ready to tell him everything I learned about Miranda Truly this morning from my grandmother’s friends and also that Eddie tried to kill his aunt Addy with an ax once, but if he doesn’t feel the need to share, neither do I. I’m glad I didn’t get around to writing any of it on my board.

  He hands me the marker and takes a seat in the chair on the other side of my desk. I go sit behind it.

  “You were worried what happened at the Massey house was going to cause you to lose your job,” he begins the lecture I knew I was going to receive from him.

  He jerks a thumb in the direction of the parking lot.

  “That’s going to cause you to lose your job.”

  “I appreciate your concern.”

  “I’m not concerned. I don’t care one way or another what happens to you. You can keep on being police chief of Bumblefuck, USA, or you can retire and take your pension and open a little pink doodad shop and get a bunch of cats.”

  Nolan doesn’t swear, so his description of Buchanan is out of character and means he’s more upset than he’s letting on.

  “A doodad shop?” I wonder.

  “You’re a better cop than that,” he goes on. “What you did. That was beneath you. You know better.”

  “If the next thing out of your mouth is I trained you better,” I interrupt him, “I’m going to . . .”

  He leans forward in his chair. “What? Shoot me?”

  I lean across my desk.

  “How many years ago was that?” I reply, trying not to shout. “I’m sorry I didn’t follow in your footsteps and become some hotshot state CID detective. I’m sorry me and my ovaries let you down.”

  “You know your ovaries had nothing to do with it.”

  We’re at a standoff. He sits back in his chair first. I take that as a sign of victory. I know he’s taking it as a sign that he’s more mature, more responsible, a better leader, a better cop.

  “Did you surrender your weapon?” he asks.

  I give him a quick salute. “Yes, sir.”

  “What’d this kid do to you?”

  “He got to me. That’s what he did.”

  “Is something going on with you lately I don’t know about?”

  I shift in my chair. I don’t want to talk to him about my personal life. I certainly don’t want to admit I’m letting anything in it affect my work. I’m definitely not going to tell him Lucky is running around threatening my sister and me and planning to sue us in civil court for lying in criminal court. But I have to tell him about Champ because I need his help. He is, after all, the Inevitable.

  “There is something,” I begin.

  He stares at me until I think the hidden intensity of those masked eyes are going to make my head explode.

  “My younger brother, Champ, who I haven’t seen in twenty-five years showed up yesterday with a nine-year-old son I didn’t know he had and left him with me.”

  He remains silent. He’s not going to make this easy.

  “I have very good reason to think he doesn’t mean to come back or at least not come back for a long time. I also have reason to think he might have some alcohol dependency problems. Maybe chemical, as well. I’d like to find him. My nephew seems to be a very nice little boy, but I’m not mother material.”

  Nolan knows a little about my past. He was twenty years old, in college playing football, working on a criminal justice degree, and already planning to attend the state police academy when my mother was murdered. We met seven years later and he knew who I was. He remembered the crime, the victim’s maiden name, and the names of her daughters. Even before he became a cop, Nolan followed accounts of all local crime like he already was a cop. He never asked me for any lurid details or pried into how my siblings and I survived; I appreciated this. It was enough that he knew this terrible thing had happened to us.

  He knows nothing about what Gil did to Champ. He does know Champ moved away and I rarely heard from him.

  He reaches underneath his suit jacket and brings out a pad of paper and a pen.

  “When did he leave?” he asks.

  “Last night. Or it would have been this morning. He was staying at my house and I got home around two a.m. I don’t remember when I fell asleep. He was gone when I woke up.”

  “Why didn’t you call when you discovered he was gone?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I was hoping he’d come back. He still might,” I add hopefully.

  Nolan ignores me. He knows I wouldn’t be talking to him if I thought my brother would return on his own.

  “Vehicle?”

  “Green Kia Soul. California plates. I didn’t get the number,” I tell him before he can ask.

  He frowns.

  “Description.”

  “Forty-four years old, fi
ve-eleven, thin, maybe one seventy. Dark hair and eyes.”

  “Home address?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Job?”

  “Unemployed.”

  “Wife? Girlfriend?”

  “None.”

  “Son’s mother?”

  “Dead.”

  He takes off his glasses and sighs.

  “Do you know anything about him?”

  “No,” I admit.

  “Criminal record?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He flips the notepad shut. “He’s had a big head start. He’s got to be well out of the state by now.”

  I want to say thank you, but he’s being too much of a jerk.

  “I’ve got the Truly case and four other active homicides. What do you have on your plate?” he digs at me further.

  I think about all his favorite home-cooked meals.

  “Tonight?” I reply in a snippy tone. “Stuffed pork chops with mashed potatoes and gravy. And lemon meringue pie.”

  He stands to go.

  “Enjoy your pork chop,” he says.

  “Enjoy eating cold SpaghettiOs out of a can over your kitchen sink.”

  I know that even though he’s ticked me off I’m going to feel bad for the rest of the day wondering if I hurt his feelings and if he really is going to eat cold canned pasta for dinner and it will be the last thing I think about tonight before I fall asleep. He’ll forget I exist the moment he gets in his car and goes back to work.

  A man can love a woman and still put himself first; a woman can put a man first she’s convinced she doesn’t love: this is why I never let myself get serious with Nolan.

  He stops on his way out my door.

  “Why’s the victim’s name written in orange?”

  I look at Camio’s eleventh-grade school photo tacked to the middle of the board. She’s smiling sweetly but I know that proves nothing.

  “The last picture taken of her when she was alive,” I say quietly. “She was eating an orange Popsicle.”

  THE SHANK, Shank, and Goldfarb law offices are only a couple of blocks from the police station. The first opportunity I get, I call to make sure Sandra is there and then I run over.

  Most of the people we arrest and process here in town don’t end up employing Sandra. They can’t afford her or they don’t require someone of her abilities. They do fine with Chet.