They stopped by their desks. Alice leaned over her computer without bothering to sit down as he snagged the car keys from the drawer.
The autopsy report wasn’t there yet.
She slammed shut the lid of her laptop, then followed him along the narrow path between the desks. “I want to know immediately when the coroner’s report comes in,” she yelled to the room at large, not even bothering to look back, and Nakamura laughed.
“You have a real specialty for pissing people off, don’t you?” he said.
“It comes naturally,” Alice said. “I wasn’t even trying that time.”
“Such a Yank.” Nakamura shook his head.
“Like you weren’t born in Chicago.” She shoved at him, reveling in the brief moment of levity. “And didn’t spend most of your life walking the beat in LA.”
Nakamura kept a straight face, though she could see a spark of humor in his eyes. “Yeah, but I’m a nice guy in general.”
They pushed through the back doors of the station into the sunlight. It was becoming habit now for all the detectives to enter and leave from the back, where it was blocked off from the streets. It helped avoid the vultures camped out in the front.
“Are you saying I’m not nice?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” He bumped his shoulder against hers, and she bit the corner of her lip, amused.
“Yeah, well, Southerners put far too high a premium on what they call nice,” she countered. “And not enough on actual kindness.”
He laughed again. “There you go pissing people off again.”
She looked around before sliding into the passenger seat of the car. “No one to offend but you, and I don’t care about your feelings.”
“Do you care about anyone’s?”
No. If she said it, she could play it off as a continuation of the joke. But something told her he’d see it as the truth it was. No, she did not care about anyone’s feelings. That ability had died a long time ago. Awkwardness crept up between them as the silence stretched, devouring the teasing air that had sparked with their banter.
“Tell me about the process of elimination,” he said, because he had an ease about him that could cut through even the worst tension.
“Like I said, I don’t buy that Charlotte did it.” She held up her palm as he shifted in his seat. “I’m not ruling her out. But there are some things that don’t make sense to me.”
Nakamura waved his hand to get her to expand.
“We’ve been watching her too closely since the day Ruby disappeared for her to have moved the body,” Alice started.
“She could have hidden her first, somewhere closer to where we found her,” Nakamura countered. “We probably would have noticed if she’d started disappearing for large amounts of time, but slipping out one night to get the body to the beach if it was already near there? I could see that.”
“So she hides the body somewhere around the turquoise house, and then . . . ,” Alice prodded.
“Then she drove to that public beach to be seen,” Nakamura said.
“With which car?” Alice asked. “The family ones were clean. I doubt she knew enough to get all the DNA out of the fabric. Not with that head wound Ruby had.”
Nakamura shrugged. “Borrowed from a friend.” He cut her off before she could say anything to that. “Just because they say they don’t interact with many people outside the family doesn’t mean they don’t. She could have some secret accomplice.”
Alice tipped her head in acknowledgment of the point. “So she snaps, kills Ruby. Calls this secret friend to come get her. They hide the body, then cook up a plan to make it look like a kidnapping.”
It wasn’t necessarily an impossible scenario.
“But then why dump her body to be found?” Alice asked. And that’s what had been sitting at the edge of her thoughts whenever she considered Charlotte. That’s what someone trying to convince a jury to sentence her would have to explain: Why would they have gone through that elaborate ruse if four days later they were going to put Ruby out on the beach?
Nakamura sucked his lower lip in. “Yeah, good point.” She poked him, and he glanced over at her. “Doesn’t rule her out, but okay. Keep going.”
“So then we have Mellie Burke, who is an idiot who can’t string two sentences together. She’s tipsy half the time and drunk the rest of it.”
Nakamura smirked at that but didn’t say anything to interrupt.
“Trudy Burke,” Alice said, tripping over her thoughts about the girl. “She reminds me of myself.”
“Are you saying you could never kill anyone?”
“No. I’m not saying that at all,” Alice said, a spike of ice drilling into the top of her spine. “We’re all capable of it. Under the right circumstances. You are.”
He tipped his head. “I never said I wasn’t.”
“I mean she’s . . . she’s not a bullshitter.” Alice kept her eyes on the road in front of them. She hadn’t meant to say it—hadn’t meant to compare herself to Trudy—but now that it was out there, she had to explain. “There’s not really any pretense with her. She wears her emotions on her face. I think . . . I think we’d see it if she’d killed Ruby, presumably by accident. I think she’d be breaking down.”
“You’re not like that,” Nakamura said, and Alice flinched despite the fact that she knew it was the truth.
“I used to be,” she said quietly.
Before Lila. It hung in the air.
The silence all but vibrated until Nakamura broke it.
“She could just be a fantastic actress.”
There was always that possibility. But if “Everyone lies” was the maxim to define the case, then to an extent they were all acting. It just came down to figuring out who wore the best mask.
Alice didn’t like people, but she knew people. She knew their little insecurities and their quirks and the way their limbs moved in reaction to strong emotion. There was something going on in Trudy’s life that pushed at her, pulled at her, slapped at her when she was around her family. There were secrets buried in the very core of her being that influenced the way her body bent and collapsed and fortified itself when it was around any of the other Burkes. But it didn’t do that when she was asked specifically about Ruby.
Explaining that, though, felt far more vulnerable to both herself and Trudy than saying it was a gut feeling and moving on. Somehow it would expose both of them.
“Do you think it’s her?” she asked instead. Deflection was her friend.
Nakamura tilted his head. “No.”
“So that leaves Hollis and Sterling, the queen and king, if you will,” she continued, but then her phone rang from where it was tucked into the pocket of her jeans. She held up a finger. “To be continued.”
“On the edge of my seat,” Nakamura said quietly as she answered.
“Bridget, tell me you have something for me,” Alice said without preamble once she saw who was calling.
“Depends on what you define something as,” the woman said, snapping her gum to emphasize the cryptic comment.
“I’m pretty sure I define it like the rest of the world does,” Alice said.
Bridget hummed. “Ya wanna hear or nah?”
“Tell me.”
“There’s nothing,” Bridget said.
Alice closed her eyes. “So how do you define something?”
“Now that’s the right question.” Bridget laughed, big and boisterous and too loud. “It’s strange, isn’t it? That we found nothing. And I’m not talking smudged, invalid fingerprints. Or brushed-away shoe prints. I’m talking nothing.”
“When nothing becomes something,” Alice murmured.
“I knew I liked you for a reason, Garner.” Bridget cracked her gum again. “It takes a pro to get by my team. This wasn’t some spur-of-the-moment thing.”
“It was calculated,” Alice said.
“I mean, above my pay grade, darling,” Bridget qualified. “But someone who just sna
ps? ’Cause they’ve gone ’round the bend? They don’t know how to do this. How to keep it this clean.”
“All right,” Alice said. “Hey, thanks. For working on that.” She knew Bridget must have been up all night.
“Course.” Bridget brushed it off and hung up without any goodbyes.
Nakamura sighed while Alice repocketed her phone. “I heard some of it.”
“Someone knew how to cover their tracks,” Alice said. “Still think that sounds like Charlotte?”
The Burke house came into view as she waited for an answer. He pulled into the only free space of curb several blocks down from the house. “Whoever killed her had up to four days to figure out how to hide the evidence. It doesn’t take a genius to realize sand wipes a lot of it out. Other than that, as long as there wasn’t much of a struggle, it’s not like they had to destroy that much DNA.”
“A little bit of luck, and what? A Google search?” Alice asked as she climbed out of the car.
She eyed the news vans parked two deep on the quiet residential road. Something about the contrast made the scene even more unsettling. “God, they multiply like a virus, don’t they?”
The journalists squawked at them as they passed, rivaling the seagulls that circled above looking to scavenge scraps of dropped food. Alice paid them just as much attention.
“Here goes nothing,” Nakamura said with just a shifting of his brows before ringing the bell. It was early, a little past 7:00 a.m., and surprise was the only thing on their side.
That and the fact that it was Mellie who answered the door. She was in a blue satin robe that ended above midthigh and was left gaping to reveal the valley of creamy flesh between her breasts. She also had on a full face of makeup, and her hair was pinned back into some kind of fancy coif. It was as if she was about to head off to a lingerie shoot.
“Detectives,” she murmured, her voice scratchy. “I’m sorry, unless you have a warrant, you’ll have to leave.”
It was more backbone than she’d expected from the woman, but Alice supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. There was clearly a party line that had been drawn, and the Burkes, if nothing else, seemed to fall into form.
“We just have a few questions for your daughter, actually,” Alice said, as an attempt to confuse her into agreeing. “Perhaps we could talk to her? With you there, of course.”
“Trudy?” Mellie turned wide eyes on Nakamura. “What could you want with Trudy?”
“Just a few questions,” Alice repeated, keeping her voice as soothing as possible. “Nothing to worry about.”
“No, I’m sorry. No, that won’t do at all,” Mellie said, starting to shut the door in their faces.
“Wait.”
They all shifted to the young woman standing just out of the stream of sunlight that was pouring in through the door. The darkness from the rest of the house hugged her narrow shoulders and threw her face into deep relief. The only bright spot was her long blonde hair that shimmered like liquid silver in the shadows.
“Trudy, that’s not a good—”
“I want to. Let them in,” Trudy interrupted her mother. Her arms came around her thin waist, her fingers smoothing over her own skin. It was a protective, self-comforting gesture in conflict with the defiant confidence of her voice. Again, it was all right there to read, if one only looked hard enough.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Mellie said under her breath but stepped back anyway, cowed by the daughter half her age.
“Yeah, well, you got up in the morning and thought that outfit was a good idea, so I don’t really put much stock in your judgment, Mells,” Trudy said.
Instead of fighting back, Mellie yanked the loose fabric over her breasts, her eyes damp when she looked back at them.
The little interaction spoke volumes about their relationship dynamics—the way Trudy called her mother by her name, the way Mellie had cowed so easily before the young girl, the derision Trudy had for the woman.
“I’m going to get Hollis,” Mellie said, and then she took off toward the back of the house.
They all watched her walk away, and then Trudy turned. “You have three minutes, tops. Don’t waste it.”
“Tell us about Zeke Durand.”
Trudy glanced toward the hallway. “Be more specific. There’s not enough time.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about him?” Alice asked.
The girl shrugged, a pure embodiment of teenage dismissiveness. It was easy to forget how young she was with the way she carried herself. “He didn’t even meet Ruby. He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“How did you know him?” Alice fired off. There was no reason to argue with her.
“He drove me into Tampa a couple times. I can’t . . . They monitor how much money I spend. I couldn’t just Uber.”
Alice filed that away. “What were you doing in Tampa?”
“It’s not relevant,” Trudy said.
“You don’t get to determine what’s relevant.”
“Actually, I do.” Trudy straightened, dropping her arms, and Alice could see the Burke training fall into place. The arrogance that came with having it as her last name. “Or would you like me to start screaming for my grandmother?”
Nakamura laid a hand on Alice’s back between her shoulder blades.
“Did you approach him first, or did he approach you?” Nakamura asked.
“I approached him. He had something I wanted, and we traded for it,” Trudy said, this time tipping her chin up to challenge them to assume the worst. Which was . . .
“Sex?” Alice asked.
There was a gleam of triumph in those cold eyes, as if they’d fallen into some kind of trap she’d set. “No.”
“Then, what?”
The question was interrupted by a sharp click of razor-thin heels on a polished floor.
“It’s not him, don’t waste your time,” Trudy muttered, then turned and faded into the darkness that lingered just beyond the foyer.
“What are you doing in this house?” Hollis’s voice preceded her, as if those seconds before she could properly enter the room would make all the difference.
“Had a few questions, ma’am,” Nakamura said, easy and slow.
But Hollis wasn’t one to be charmed.
“You need to leave immediately,” Hollis said. “And do not come back without a warrant. Or you’ll be hearing from my entire army of lawyers.”
Alice stared at the space where Trudy had disappeared, but they had no choice. Neither she nor Nakamura said anything to the matriarch as they turned to leave.
The moment their feet hit the porch, the door shut behind them.
“And why exactly do you not think it was Hollis?” Nakamura asked, sliding his sunglasses onto the bridge of his nose.
“If it had been Hollis,” Alice said, keeping her voice pitched low enough so that it wouldn’t be picked up by any of the vultures, “we wouldn’t have found the body.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
TRUDY
July 13, 2018
Sixteen days before the kidnapping
“You look like you ate some bad shrimp, honey,” the woman next to Trudy said. Her name was Candy, she’d told Trudy earlier with a wink, like they were all in on the joke. “Gotta unclench or you’re gonna scare them away.”
Nervous laughter tripped out even as Trudy tried to swallow it. The way the other performers were watching her made her wary. Turned her bitchy.
She shifted in the director’s chair so that her back was to the small cluster of girls lingering by Candy, the clear matriarch of the group. It probably wasn’t a good idea to piss them off by ignoring them, but her tongue was thick in her mouth, and she wasn’t sure engaging with them would be any better.
Instead, she met her eyes in the mirror. Flaws would not hold up well under the scrutiny of the two rows of bright, uncovered bulbs that lined the glass. She shifted her wig, appreciating the fact that fake neon hair was in style.
The
purple bangs slashed in an asymmetrical diagonal across her forehead, changing the shape of her face, and the ends, which faded into a teal blue, slanted just below her chin. Where her longer hair kept things soft, the bob cut made everything sharper—the line of her cheek, her jaw, her nose. The makeup and glitter she’d applied with a heavy hand did the rest of the job. Her disguise wouldn’t hold up to someone who knew her well, but for any of her grandfather’s acquaintances who wandered into the third-rate club, they would see what they wanted to see. Just another girl on the pole, desperate for the damp one-dollar bills they clutched so tightly in their sweaty palms.
“You’ve got bruises, baby?” The girl who called herself Brooklyn popped her ass on Trudy’s counter, knocking the old eye shadow and crusted bronzer the girls had given her out of the way.
Brooklyn was short, with curves that challenged the bra she wore beneath the pink silk dressing gown. Her midnight-black hair was dyed to bring out the violet streaks that made it interesting, and the strands settled against flawless skin. She looked like an evil Snow White, and Trudy guessed she was the most popular dancer in the place.
She wondered why Brooklyn was at such a shitty joint, where her closest competition was Candy, whose skin was turning that special type of Florida leather brown, and Lola, whose features would just never add up to anything other than passable.
“Who doesn’t?” Trudy shot back. She knew girls like Brooklyn. She was a girl like Brooklyn. And the fact that the question had been coated in sympathy didn’t hide the fact that her eyes were predatory.
“True.” Brooklyn pouted a bit. “Only bruised girls end up at Mac’s.”
Mac’s. The strip club didn’t even have a mysterious noir name, like the ones Trudy liked in movies. The Blue Moon. The Pink Flamingo.
But maybe if they’d used one of those names, people would have been pissed at what they got. Walking into Mac’s Strip Club, you didn’t expect anything other than what it was. The carpet was dark maroon, patterned with black stripes to hide unfortunate stains, while the walls were cheap wood paneling more popular four decades earlier. There was an all-you-can-eat shrimp buffet that ran along the back wall, but its best feature was the three fried pieces left to swim in the butter sauce that coated the cold metal bins. Drinks were plentiful, but they were only palatable by mixing them with copious amounts of juice or sugar. The only people Trudy had seen taking straight shots so far had been a large Russian man in the corner and Candy.
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