He laughed. “Well, you were batting a thousand until the marriage line. That won’t be happening until I’ve made my first million.”
“Ah, confirming: Wall Street wannabe,” she said, bemused and judging in equal measure.
“Yup. The good news here for you is that I should be at a million by the time I’m twenty-five,” he said. “Then we can get married.”
She kept that half-judgy half smile plastered on her face. He waited for something more, but she seemed perfectly content to leave him hanging. She didn’t look at him, but she also didn’t move away. She just casually continued scanning the crowd, drinking in the people instead of an actual drink.
“You just come to bars and people-watch?” he asked.
“Yup.”
“Why?”
She rocked slightly on her feet, her eyes still on the patrons. “Every single person has a story to tell. I like to try and read their stories.”
“You read mine pretty well,” he replied.
“You’re as hard to read as a Baby Bop ABC book,” she said as she started to leave. “Tell your frat bro happy birthday for me.”
“My name’s Jeff,” he said, hoping to keep her there a while longer.
She patted his chest gently. “Nice to meet you, Jeff, but I can’t marry anyone who hasn’t made at least five million by their twenty-fifth birthday.”
She walked out the door.
Then she saw him again the following Thursday night.
He stood in front of the Mets paraphernalia as she walked through the door. As a forensic psychology and criminal justice double major, she liked looking for patterns of behavior in the regulars and contrasting the body language of people who knew each other with that of people who were just meeting, so she had gotten into this routine.
He waved her over. She felt obliged to at least say hello.
“Never got your name last week,” Jeff said.
“I never gave it,” she replied.
Before she had a chance to dismiss him, he pulled a manila folder from his backpack.
“I figured out a way to make five million by my twenty-fifth birthday, but I’m going to need some help from you,” he said, handing her the folder.
“So, we’d have a joint account?” she said with true curiosity. Her judging half smile softened as she absorbed the details of the spreadsheet analysis.
“We’d have to live together to cut down on food, rent, et cetera,” he said. “That opens up more capital for me to invest.”
“Impressive,” she said. “Heavy on Berkshire Hathaway. And I see the food budget is skewed quite a bit in your favor.”
“I rationed it based on height,” he said. “You get ramen and cardboard. We have to sacrifice.”
“And my clothing budget is . . . zero?”
“You won’t be able to wear clothes around the apartment for the first few years.”
She laughed. She rarely laughed because she rarely found things funny, but also she hated her laugh.
Andrea handed the folder back to him. “You worked on this all week?”
“I pulled an all-nighter last Thursday building the model,” Jeff said. “I’ve been coming back here every night since then hoping to see you again.”
That one caught her by surprise. People rarely caught her by surprise.
“My name is Andrea,” she said.
They had dinner together that night.
They spent the next year enduring the Morana investigation and her unconsummated love affair with Ramon Mercado.
Sixteen months later, when Andrea was one day away from breaking up with Jeff, she found out she was pregnant.
* * *
■ ■ ■
NOW, AS ANDREA turned in to the Le Parc development, she tried to focus on the task at hand and visualize where the Ferris farm had originally been located. She parked on Redwood Court, a dead-end street at the back of the development. She grabbed her flashlight and walked to the dirt-and-brush field that ran two hundred yards to the creek.
She suspected the area where the Ferris bone had been found decades ago remained untouched to this day. She needed to get as close to that spot as she could. She stumbled to one knee, using the large flashlight to brace her fall. She strained to keep herself from toppling over like a front-loaded suitcase. She turned the flashlight on and was better able to see the ground in front of her.
Her back hurt. Her knees hurt. What the hell was wrong with her? Why didn’t she want to be home accepting a life of misery watching the Hallmark Channel?
Through the inky darkness to the west, she heard the water moving softly.
She turned off the light to get an idea of what they had originally seen.
Looking east, the Ferris farm would have been at one o’clock from her vantage point, the garage at two thirty, and the barn at three o’clock to her right. Where had they brought the body part from? They wouldn’t have parked on North Post Road or Village Road West because both had been two-lane roads with no shoulder. The torso hadn’t been wrapped. That was odd considering it had been dismembered elsewhere and the parts had been driven to different spots across town. It stood to reason they would have bagged or wrapped the parts before transporting them by car. Unless they simply tossed them into the back of a pickup truck, which every farmer had? The truck beds were likely already dirty; no need to worry about washing them out. Would they have parked in the driveway by the garage and main house? No.
She swept her light toward where the farm had stood. She visualized how it had looked decades ago, picturing a late-night moon peering through clouds. A pickup truck made a left off North Post Road onto the Ferris driveway. It drove down the gravel driveway leading to the barn, then stopped. A man got out, alone. He walked into the shed. He got a spade. He grabbed a severed leg from the truck. He carried it toward her. He stopped no more than five yards from where she stood. He dropped the leg and started digging through the wet ground. He buried the body part and shoveled the muck back in place.
The man walked back toward the shed. He returned the shovel, or just left it propped next to the shed. He got back in his car—or, no. Andrea saw the remnants of a horizontal scar in the land, running parallel to the street. It was a dirt walking path carved out between the original house and the barn, covering about forty yards.
The man had walked from the barn to the house. Because he lived there. Because the man burying the body part was Jonathan Ferris.
The dismembered body had been buried on the properties of the people who had been involved in the murder.
25
KENNY strolled into the lobby of the Princeton Windrows Senior Living Facility. To celebrate the birthday of their oldest resident, the facility was having an all-out weekday brunch. He looked around for his mother. The director, Laura Privan, pointed behind her through one set of double doors to the formal dining room. It was decorated with linen tablecloths for the brunch, extra glass settings for mimosas or wine, and fancy floral arrangements on each table. Most of the elderly male residents wore suits and ties. Kenny knew that generation loved to dress up, so he’d worn a sports coat and khakis with an open button-down shirt and loafers. He hated ties. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d worn one. Though many of his high school classmates had been getting married, he hadn’t been invited to a wedding in a couple of years. Such was life for a social pariah.
He spotted his mother sitting at a table for four with Chanying Gāo, one of the few other Asian residents at Windrows. When he came over, Mrs. Gāo smiled. His mother didn’t. “Don’t get up, ladies,” he said, when neither moved. He kissed Mrs. Gāo on the cheek, then leaned over the table to kiss his mom.
“You look very handsome, Li Jie,” said Chanying.
“Thank you,” Kenny said. “How are you, Mom?”
“I am fine, Kenneth,” Huiquing Lee re
plied with pretty much the tone Kenny expected from her. Would she ever accept the stench of his failure, or would her nose always be as crinkled as her ass was clenched? She had never been an easy woman, or a happy person. That had affected her relationship with his father, with her kids, with the world. Kenny was never sure exactly what it was she had always been so unhappy about, but it had shaped him more than he liked to admit.
“Thank you for letting me join you,” he said as he sat down.
“Since you so rarely do,” his mother said, “I assumed whatever it was that you wanted was important enough to make us both suffer through this.”
He liked it when Blaire cut to the chase. Her American name had cost her status in the Asian community but had given her a better career. In his thoughts, she was always Blaire, because he knew it flummoxed her. Kenny liked seeing his mother flummoxed.
“Asking around about the murder has opened up a lot of unspoken prejudices from old townies and the Asians who have been here for generations,” he said.
“Someone was murdered?” asked Mrs. Gāo.
“It was just an Indian gas station attendant, Chanying,” said Huiquing. “Go get us some shrimp cocktail.”
Mrs. Gāo struggled out of her chair, using her armrests to keep herself upright as she fished for her walker. Realizing he was staring and doing nothing to help, Kenny pulled her walker closer. Mrs. Gāo patted his arm and went on a shrimp quest with what Kenny thought was a skip to her step, but realized was just arthritis of the hip.
“I’m trying to understand the angle, Mom,” said Kenny. “Bennett Dobeck is scared of something. Every Indian family I talked to is scared of . . . everything. I’m trying to figure out how clueless I am to reality or if it’s all in their imaginations.”
“You are incredibly clueless to reality, Kenneth,” she said. “But don’t fault yourself. We raised you that way.”
“Why?”
Huiquing took a long, slow sip of her mimosa. “To protect you and your brother. To protect ourselves as well, I imagine.”
“Protect us from what?”
“White insecurity,” she said, smiling. “It’s all the rage now, but your father and I saw it coming decades ago. We watched the farms going away. We watched the houses going up. We were here, your father and I. We weren’t born in West Windsor, but we were born in New Jersey. So were my parents. I went to high school here. We bought a house in one of those developments. All our neighbors were white. You weren’t born yet. It was the late eighties. First house that was put up for sale on our block was in nineteen ninety-four, just a couple years after you were born. When the Nelsons moved back to Kansas, a Chinese family moved in. The Xues. From China. They didn’t trust us because they thought we were Americans. Our white neighbors didn’t trust us because they thought we were Chinese.”
“How did you feel about that?”
“I didn’t much care one way or another,” she said, clearly showing she cared in all ways. “I had been dealing with the stupidity of people my entire life. I was used to it back then; I’m indifferent to it now.”
“And then? What about our first house?”
“Then the Graysons moved away. And then the Parkers. The Regans. The Feinbergs. The Richards,” she said, mentally rattling them off. “And new people moved in to take their place. Indian. Chinese. Indian. Chinese. Indian.” She got up out of her chair. “It’s going to take that woman a fucking day and half to get the shrimp, isn’t it? I want some Caesar salad.”
His mom walked away, her back ramrod straight, always the illusion of class and elegance. Kenny sat for a minute, thinking about what she had said. He watched Mrs. Gāo bump into about ten people on her way back to the table. He offered to take her plate and helped her into her seat.
Mrs. Gāo was several years older than his mother, and Kenny always questioned why she was Blaire’s de facto meal date. He assumed it was because his mom liked having a punching bag at her beck and call, but another part of him wondered if she had no other friends at the facility.
She gestured toward her plate of shrimp and he took one. “Where did you live before here, Mrs. Gāo?”
“Shanghai,” she said. “Then Wang Wei was offered the job at Princeton and we came to this country.”
“Were you accepted by the people at the university?”
Mrs. Gāo laughed. “It’s Princeton. It’s all very politely segregated.”
Kenny smirked. Okay, he thought, it was time for a bagel with lox and an omelet. And a fistful of bacon. With his mother footing the bill, he planned to eat enough for a week. He excused himself and got up. Seeing his mother just beyond the doors, he avoided the main entrance that led to the cold buffet. He walked around the long way, through the secondary formal room. He squeezed through a tight fit between tables and noticed Bradley Dobeck, Steve Appelhans, and another former local farmer, Barry Banner, who’d run Creamland Dairies for decades. They sat near the double doors that led to the foyer, where the buffet was arranged.
He walked right up to the table and stood before them until they noticed him. “I’m Ken,” he said. “I went to high school with your grandson, Mr. Dobeck.”
“Whoopdeefuckingdoo,” said Dobeck through a mouthful of French toast.
“I’m still friends with him,” Kenny said. “Had drinks with him a couple days ago.”
“I didn’t know there were any gay bars in West Windsor,” said Dobeck.
“Well, Buffalo Wild Wings,” said Kenny. “It’s a happy place, but I don’t know if I’d say it’s gay.”
What interested Kenny was that the elder Dobeck had a steel inside him that was five times harder than what his son, Chief Bennett Dobeck, used to intimidate people.
“I just wanted to say your legacy lives on in the police department, sir,” continued Kenny. “Your son runs a tight ship and your grandson is becoming a good cop.”
That was just enough to take the edge off Dobeck’s manner.
“I’m sure they’ll catch this murderer in no time at all,” Kenny prodded.
“A murderer?” asked Appelhans, at a level of volume 200 percent louder than it needed to be. “What murder?”
“The murder,” snapped Dobeck.
“We talked about it, Steve,” said Banner.
“We did?” asked Appelhans.
“Yes, you dummy,” said Dobeck.
“When?”
“All week long!” said an exasperated Banner.
Kenny thought he could go order his omelet, wait for it to be made, and bring it back and the conversation would still be going on, but he sucked it up and let it play out.
“A murder? Really?” Appelhans asked again, but louder.
“A dothead,” said Dobeck. “It’s not a big deal, Steve.”
“A dothead?” asked Appelhans.
Kenny had had enough. “Different than anything you had to deal with when you were police chief, Mr. Dobeck?” he asked.
“We had our share of shit, kid,” said Dobeck.
“Really? There hadn’t been a murder here in my entire life,” prompted Kenny.
“There were some back in the day,” admitted Dobeck.
“Remember George Donblocky killing his wife and kids?” asked Banner. “In fifty-seven?”
“Shit, yeah,” replied Dobeck. “Fifty-nine, actually. Nasty. Blood and guts everywhere.”
“Donblocky?” chimed in Appelhans. “He was crazy.”
“Ergo, the murder of his family,” Kenny interjected. Then he poked, “What about trouble from Trenton or anything like that?”
“Like the Negroes, you mean?” asked Dobeck.
“I think they prefer to be called coloreds now,” said Appelhans.
“I’m pretty sure this week we’re saying African Americans,” Kenny said.
“We had a few issues,” Dobeck said. “Most of them
knew their place.”
“Day pickers who got uppity sometimes, or stole something from their coworkers or the farmer,” said Banner. “Nothing that couldn’t be handled in-house.”
Kenny caught the irritated glance Dobeck cast at Banner. “In-house?” he asked.
Banner demurred and Dobeck quickly said, “By us. By the police. No need for state troopers or the fucking NAACP or anything like that in my day. We got the job done fast and we got the job done right.”
Kenny rapped on the table with his fist. “And I’m sure your son and grandson will do the same now, sir. Have a good day.”
He walked away, both grimace and smile plastered on his face as he considered the exchange. “Fucking NAACP”—that had come out of nowhere, hadn’t it?
Kenny walked toward the buffet bar, willing to bet the omelet he craved that the skeleton they’d uncovered would turn out to be that of an African American.
26
THE drive north on the New Jersey Turnpike had proven relatively painless because Andrea had let them watch Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse on the iPad. She cruised up toward exit 14 past the Newark airport. It was a longer way, but she enjoyed the kids’ reactions when they watched the planes land and take off. They oohed and aahed as a large United plane flew over them and landed to their left.
Several minutes later, she was in Newark. She made a right onto Van Buren Street and pulled into Independence Park. It was crowded, as inner-city camp programs had taken over the space. The kids clamored to play in the park, which she hadn’t anticipated when she’d agreed to meet Ramon there.
Then she saw him.
Ramon Mercado was sitting at a small picnic table near a playground set. He wore an immaculately pressed white shirt, a blue tie, and dark gray suit pants. He must have left the suit jacket in his car as a concession to the heat.
She turned off the ignition. Eli complained that the movie wasn’t over yet, and Sarah and Sadie squealed. Andrea noticed that Ruth noticed her tension.
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